This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
A few days ago, Milwaukee optioned Keston Hiura to the minor leagues temporarily suspending what has been a horrendous season for the young hitter. He heads to the minors with a .152/.247/.266 batting line in 89 plate appearances with a 36 percent strikeout rate. We are talking about a player who had an ADP of 71 this year, going as high as 42nd overall in NFBC drafts.
Hiura is not the only top-100 pick struggling (looking at you Freddie Freeman), but with these awful 2021 numbers coming on the heels of the disappointing 2020 numbers, perhaps there is a lesson for all of us. I include myself as I took him 77th overall in my RotoWire Online Championship in mid-March and just cut him this past FAAB period to make room for Willie Calhoun on my roster. I did not want to cut him, but with Gio Urshela, Mike Moustakas, Kyle Seager, Justin Upton and Jarred Kelenic on the bench it was tough to justify cutting the kid or one of the four active players for someone who could be in the minors for a while. Cutting a top-100 pick five weeks into the season takes some conviction as I am in the 3 percent of leagues where Hiura is now a free agent while he is somehow still being started in 44 percent of other leagues. Let's look at what has gotten Hiura to this point and why many others are not ready to join the
A few days ago, Milwaukee optioned Keston Hiura to the minor leagues temporarily suspending what has been a horrendous season for the young hitter. He heads to the minors with a .152/.247/.266 batting line in 89 plate appearances with a 36 percent strikeout rate. We are talking about a player who had an ADP of 71 this year, going as high as 42nd overall in NFBC drafts.
Hiura is not the only top-100 pick struggling (looking at you Freddie Freeman), but with these awful 2021 numbers coming on the heels of the disappointing 2020 numbers, perhaps there is a lesson for all of us. I include myself as I took him 77th overall in my RotoWire Online Championship in mid-March and just cut him this past FAAB period to make room for Willie Calhoun on my roster. I did not want to cut him, but with Gio Urshela, Mike Moustakas, Kyle Seager, Justin Upton and Jarred Kelenic on the bench it was tough to justify cutting the kid or one of the four active players for someone who could be in the minors for a while. Cutting a top-100 pick five weeks into the season takes some conviction as I am in the 3 percent of leagues where Hiura is now a free agent while he is somehow still being started in 44 percent of other leagues. Let's look at what has gotten Hiura to this point and why many others are not ready to join the cut party with him just yet.
Below is Hiura's pre-season fantasy outlook from his player profile page:
Hiura burst onto the scene in his 2019 rookie season, putting up elite numbers from the second base position almost immediately after making his big-league debut. As such, expectations were high for Hiura in his second season, particularly with him moving to a prime spot in the heart of the Brewers' order. While Hiura put up some of the best counting stats among second basemen in 2020, he also really struggled in the ratio departments, thanks mainly to a National League-worst 34.6 K% (among qualified hitters). With Hiura failing to make much contact, he also did not find himself on base much and stole just three bases last season. Hiura struck out a lot in his rookie season, too, but he was far less lucky in his second campaign, as his BABIP nosedived. Hiura will need to make some adjustments in Year 3, but he has the skills to be an elite hitter and has as good a chance to return value in 2021 as anyone.
Here is his 2020 pre-season fantasy outlook:
Triple-A pitchers provided little challenge, and Hiura earned his first trip to the majors in mid-May thanks to a Travis Shaw injury. Hiura showed the hitting skills that made him a Top-10 prospect in baseball, but the Brewers still sent him back down when Shaw returned. Shaw struggled mightily, and Hiura became a regular in the big-league lineup in late June. All he did after that was impress at the plate, posting a .956 OPS the rest of the way. Hiura did strike out in 30.7 percent of his MLB at-bats last year, but he has the bat speed to cut that at least closer to league average. Of greater concern is Hiura's defense, which won't hurt his value in most formats but could lead to him being subbed out for a defensive replacement more than desired. Despite the flaws Hiura will be an everyday player and hit near the top of the batting order, and he has all the tools to be a five-category contributor.
The bolded text is mine because it has now been included in consecutive write-ups rather prominently yet there was a bull market for Hiura the last two offseasons. That strikeout rate has never been good at the major league level:
There was a time toward the end of 2019 where he looked like he was trending in the right direction, but the strikeout rate has continued to live well above the league average of 24 percent for too long. A look at the plate discipline rolling game average shows how Hiura has been his own worst enemy continuing to chase pitches out of the zone while also struggling to make contact on pitches thrown within the zone. Worse yet, his overall swing and miss rate has been incredibly poor throughout:
It is worth pointing out that what has ailed Hiura in 2021 is not as much new as it is exacerbated. Looking at 2019-2020, Hiura had the fifth-highest strikeout rate for hitters with at least 500 plate appearances:
Name | PA | BB% | K% |
|---|---|---|---|
644 | 11% | 39% | |
523 | 16% | 37% | |
565 | 5% | 34% | |
540 | 7% | 33% | |
594 | 7% | 32% | |
671 | 9% | 32% | |
591 | 11% | 32% | |
651 | 10% | 32% | |
708 | 10% | 32% | |
503 | 6% | 31% | |
551 | 9% | 31% | |
732 | 10% | 31% | |
729 | 8% | 31% | |
561 | 13% | 31% | |
574 | 6% | 31% | |
599 | 11% | 30% | |
624 | 9% | 30% | |
633 | 10% | 30% | |
676 | 4% | 30% | |
531 | 11% | 30% |
Had any of us seen this table pre-draft, we may have had a different opinion of Hiura once we saw how similar he was to Chavis or that he was striking out more than the likes of Santana, Goodrum, Odor, or even Renfroe. Sano and Gallo are known quantities at this point and the fantasy market has spoken loudly that they'll live with the strikeouts as long as they're hitting home runs. Alfaro is a catcher with some offensive upside, so we tolerate him. Chavis looked as overmatched in 2020 as Hiura did here in 2021 to date, but there is more than just looking at this level.
If we drill down to swinging strike rate, Hiura's 19 percent SwSTR% is only lower than Alfaro and Mondesi's the last two years. This means any other hitter who you perceived as a bid swing and miss player still made more contact than Hiura did from 2019-2020.
Name | SwStr% |
|---|---|
23% | |
21% | |
19% | |
19% | |
18% | |
18% | |
18% | |
17% | |
17% | |
17% | |
17% | |
17% | |
16% | |
16% | |
15% | |
15% | |
15% | |
15% | |
15% | |
15% |
Again, we have high risk/high upside players on this list, but Hiura is once again near the top of the list. If we look at CSW%, which combines called strikes plus swinging strikes, nobody was worse than Hiura from 2019 to 2020:
Name | CSW% |
|---|---|
32% | |
32% | |
32% | |
32% | |
32% | |
32% | |
32% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
31% | |
30% |
So far, we have seen enough data here to make us wonder what we saw in Hiura in the first place. StatCast shows the following percentile rankings for him in 2019 and 2020:
There is quite a smattering of red on the 2019 rankings, but his 2020 numbers look much less exciting save the strong barrel rate and above average max exit velocity. StatCast does not allow us to look at combined years of data, but some manual work presents the following percentiles in some key areas for Hiura:
Metric | Percentile |
|---|---|
Contact% | 2nd |
SwSTR% | 2nd |
InPlay | 3rd |
K% | 23rd |
Chase% | 31st |
CallStr% | 77th |
Simply put, Hiura has punished some mistakes, but he has struggled to make contact much more frequently when he does swing the bat. I am not privy to league scouting reports on Hiura, but the data shows us the league is very much convinced he cannot handle velocity and is not hesitating to challenge him in the strike zone with increasing regularity:
Remember the scene in "Top Gun" where Viper told Maverick that he had been through hell and he had a confidence problem? That is what I believe we are seeing here. Hiura absolutely has his flaws, and we should have given them more credence heading into the season because the warning signs were there. That said, we have seen what he is capable of doing when he makes contact. In an ideal world, Hiura stays in Triple-A and works on things because he needs the time to work on his hitting without the added pressure of needing to play a new position. Milwaukee and fantasy owners saw how that impacted Avisail Garcia last season, and Hiura took it to a lower level here in 2021.
We need to remember it does not matter how hard a player can hit a baseball if those events are too infrequent. Hiura has been a painful lesson for many who took him in the top 75 only to see him contribute as little as he did before his demotion to the minors where he could stay for the foreseeable future.
