Cubs draftee Jordan Wicks becomes K-State’s first-ever first-round pick
MANHATTAN, Kan. (BVM) — Kansas State baseball history was made Sunday night when the Chicago Cubs selected left-handed pitcher Jordan Wicks with the 21st overall pick in the 2021 Major League Baseball Draft.
Wicks became the first-ever K-State player to be selected in the first round of the draft and just the third to be taken within the first three rounds. Jack Woolsey, picked in the second round (42nd overall) by the San Francisco Giants in 1969, was previously the highest-drafted Wildcat and Carter Jurica was selected by the Giants in the third round (105th overall) of the 2010 draft.
As MLB.com’s No. 16-ranked prospect overall and the clear top left-handed pitcher available in this year’s draft, Wicks was a sure bet to become the first Wildcat to come off the board before the end of the first round, and the southpaw was thrilled that it was an organization with such a storied history as the Cubs who made the pick.
“I’m super excited to be with an organization like them and I just couldn’t be happier,” Wicks said Sunday night after he was selected. “It was something we definitely thought was a possibility was Chicago and when I heard they were a possibility for me I got extremely excited. You know all the players like Ryne Sandberg, and just all the guys that have played with the Cubs and just to be in that field, in Wrigley Field, it’s incredible.”
A forever moment for Jordan Wicks #KStateBSB x @Cubs pic.twitter.com/j9MbuyfCSo
— K-State Baseball (@KStateBSB) July 12, 2021
Wicks burst on the scene in 2019 when he was named the Big 12 Freshman of the Year after breaking the program’s freshman records for both strikeouts (86) and innings pitched (84.2). He allowed only one run in four starts during a COVID-19-shortened 2020 season and then became an All-American this past spring after setting a single-season program record with 118 strikeouts in 92.1 innings pitched while shattering the K-State career strikeout record with 230.
“The Chicago Cubs got a really, really good pitcher, a great competitor but a world-class human being,” K-State head coach Pete Hughes said in a draft night interview. “He’s got his fingerprints all over our program and will for a long time and we’re very fortunate to be a part of his life and his career. … At our level you have to have really good stuff to win and to be competitive an obviously to be a first-rounder you have to have really good stuff, but you have to be a first-round human being and a first-round teammate and a first-round competitor and his will to win is like no other and that’s really where the separation comes.”
Wicks throws a mid-90s fastball with a high spin rate and an improving low-80s slider which can also morph into a cutter at times, and he also features an upper-70s curveball, but it’s the lefty’s nasty changeup, considered to be the best changeup in the draft, that makes him an especially intriguing prospect and could be a difference-maker when he arrives in the big leagues.
“If I get in there and get to learn from guys like that that have been there and been battle tested, guys like Kyle Hendricks who throw incredible changeups and know how to really pitch, to be able to pick their brains and to see the kind of stuff they’re thinking, it’s a blessing for me and I can’t wait for it,” Wicks said.
