Keston Hiura [Promoted to AA 5/31/18]

[JohnBriggs12]

The first “gamble” should be to keep Miller in at shortstop. If the D is okay, his bat will be a big spark to that position.

 

The second “gamble” should be handing the catching duties off to Nottingham after the all star break and seeing if he can be a spark at that position.

 

And come mid-August if these other two things aren’t doing enough for the offense, the third “gamble” should be bringing up Hiura if Villar is still struggling to hit over a .700 OPS. And this should really only happen if Hiura continues to scorch minor league pitching and playing adequate defense.

 

Hiura is the least risky of all those gambles. Nottingham has never hit anywhere until CS this year and he's been about on par with Bethancourt. The odds of him outproducing Pina are long. Miller is a big swing and miss guy but at least he's proven to have power.

[brewmann04]

Do you think Christian B gets a call ?

[JohnBriggs12]

Hiura gets vastly overhyped in my opinion. His career BABIP is north of .400 and at AA is .432. Put that at a more realistic level and add his unimpressive on base skills you can imagine his numbers would drop like a rock.

 

 

This is my favorite sentence. "Vastly" overhyped.

 

Yelich's career BABIP in the major leagues is .355. I'm guessing when he hit .330 for two straight seasons in the minors, he had a BABIP of .400+, Great hitters all have high BABIP. The Brewers don't need him to hit .360 for the Brewers. The just need another productive bat. and he's likely capable of hitting .280-.290 with occasional power. His floor is probably .250 which is no worse than the guys they trot out there on a daily basis. So he's worth the risk. It's pretty simple.

[MrTPlush]

Hiura gets vastly overhyped in my opinion. His career BABIP is north of .400 and at AA is .432. Put that at a more realistic level and add his unimpressive on base skills you can imagine his numbers would drop like a rock.

 

 

This is my favorite sentence. "Vastly" overhyped.

 

Yelich's career BABIP in the major leagues is .355. I'm guessing when he hit .330 for two straight seasons in the minors, he had a BABIP of .400+, Great hitters all have high BABIP. The Brewers don't need him to hit .360 for the Brewers. The just need another productive bat. and he's likely capable of hitting .280-.290 with occasional power. His floor is probably .250 which is no worse than the guys they trot out there on a daily basis. So he's worth the risk. It's pretty simple.

 

Woah it’s like if you read my posts you’d see I said the same thing. Though if his floor is .250 he probably is not better than what we are trotting out now because his defense is likely inferior than every other player we trot out.

 

Look all I’m saying is I think Hiura gets overhyped and everyone assumes he is going to come up and mash. Maybe he does maybe he doesn’t...no one really knows. Sure one can argue he just hits everything and doesn’t need to walk. I mean sure that is true, but that’s just an assumption.

 

Just saying Hiura may not be the offensive savior people think he can be...in the short term...this year alone.

 

 

On another note:

 

Somewhere someone asked of examples of players who started in A ball and made an impact at the MLB level the same year...Christian Yelich to name one. I think he started 2013 repeating A+, but regardless he went from A+ to AA to MLB (late July). He hit to a 112 OPS+ that year at the MLB level.

[young guns]

Not that I want to compare him to a cub, but wasn't schwarber up really quick?

[buckybrewer232]

The first “gamble” should be to keep Miller in at shortstop. If the D is okay, his bat will be a big spark to that position.

 

The second “gamble” should be handing the catching duties off to Nottingham after the all star break and seeing if he can be a spark at that position.

 

And come mid-August if these other two things aren’t doing enough for the offense, the third “gamble” should be bringing up Hiura if Villar is still struggling to hit over a .700 OPS. And this should really only happen if Hiura continues to scorch minor league pitching and playing adequate defense.

 

Hiura is the least risky of all those gambles. Nottingham has never hit anywhere until CS this year and he's been about on par with Bethancourt. The odds of him outproducing Pina are long. Miller is a big swing and miss guy but at least he's proven to have power.

 

Nottingham is a gamble but I thought in his brief time in Milwaukee earlier this season, he at least put together some solid ABs. Some better at bats than we've seen from Pina almost all season.

 

I would take Nottingham over Bethancourt. Bethancourt's numbers are completely CO Springs driven- with a sub .700 OPS away from CO Springs. Nottingham's road .OPS is a decent .748 and still gets on base with a .358 OBP. He just hasn't shown any power away from Colorado.

[JohnBriggs12]

The first “gamble” should be to keep Miller in at shortstop. If the D is okay, his bat will be a big spark to that position.

 

The second “gamble” should be handing the catching duties off to Nottingham after the all star break and seeing if he can be a spark at that position.

 

And come mid-August if these other two things aren’t doing enough for the offense, the third “gamble” should be bringing up Hiura if Villar is still struggling to hit over a .700 OPS. And this should really only happen if Hiura continues to scorch minor league pitching and playing adequate defense.

 

Hiura is the least risky of all those gambles. Nottingham has never hit anywhere until CS this year and he's been about on par with Bethancourt. The odds of him outproducing Pina are long. Miller is a big swing and miss guy but at least he's proven to have power.

 

Nottingham is a gamble but I thought in his brief time in Milwaukee earlier this season, he at least put together some solid ABs. Some better at bats than we've seen from Pina almost all season.

 

I would take Nottingham over Bethancourt. Bethancourt's numbers are completely CO Springs driven- with a sub .700 OPS away from CO Springs. Nottingham's road .OPS is a decent .748 and still gets on base with a .358 OBP. He just hasn't shown any power away from Colorado.

 

It's way too simplistic to look at Bethancourt's home/road splits and conclude his success in all CS driven. Bethancourt has a career AAA slash line of .299/.330/.455 in well over 800 AAA AB's including more than half of those in the International League. He also has a lower K rate than Nottingham this year and over his career. That's not to downgrade Nottingham, but it's certainly not a sure thing that either could surpass what Pina's produced this year. Nottingham's handful of major league AB's mean nothing.

[pacopete4]

Even if Nottingham is equal to Pina, which wouldn’t be too hard to do, that’s fine. Nottingham is hopefully the future and has done well enough in AAA to warrant a look. No need to add Bethancourt to the 40 man when Nottingham is staring right at your face.

[YelichPosse]

Even if Nottingham is equal to Pina, which wouldn’t be too hard to do, that’s fine. Nottingham is hopefully the future and has done well enough in AAA to warrant a look. No need to add Bethancourt to the 40 man when Nottingham is staring right at your face.

 

I'm a Nottingham fan because of the at bats he put together up here. Results usually follow that type of patience.

 

The problem with him though, is now with Kratz performing like a decent backup... he is blocked because its proven that Pina is "the man" and for some reason the Brewers brass loves Pina and thinks hes amazing with pitchers. I, for one, do not agree with that assessment. Watching where he sets up and what he calls in situations sometimes hurts my head, and if a casual fan can watch and say "thats not a good location" - or "thats a bad idea" and then boom - home run, or laser to the wall... I don't know. And yes we are overly critical with Arcia, Perez, Pina, Villar even - but let's be honest - it sucks having 4-5 spots be near automatic outs daily.... to still be this good though is amazing... imagine if we get any support down there!

 

I'd love to see Hiura up.... Villar to SS... Miller to super sub... Sogard gone... Nottingham up... Pina though would go where?

 

Ahhh,,,, I dream.

[FVBrewerFan]

Pina though would go where?

 

Pina would still be there. Nottingham would replace Kratz, not Pina. They could share the catching duties, whatever % that works out to would depend on them.

[tmwiese55]

I think it's tough not to give Pina credit for his pitcher handling when in his 1.5 years the staff has massively overperformed. Plus the other eye test stuff is all good for him on D, arm strength throwing runners out, pickoffs, blocks, all that.

[pacopete4]

The pitchers massively over performaned with Vogt and they have with Kratz. Maybe it’s just the pitchers. Pina is a backup. Nottingham to the rescue.

[cmow]

If Hiura were called up this year -- he would be in some ways mirroring the path of Andrew Benintendi, who made it to the majors 1+ year after being drafted as an extremely successful and polished college hitter. Drafted the previous summer, Benintendi started 2016 in high-A, then went to AA in mid-May, then skipped AAA and got called to the Red Sox in early August, contributing to the Red Sox winning the AL East.

 

Also -- Benintendi was 7th pick in draft; Hiura was 9th.

[homer]

I think if they do call him up that August would be a good time to do so.

[TooLiveBrew]

Mini-slump for Hiura. 1-20 over his past five games. Hope he can shake it off & get back to raking.

[bork]

Mini-slump for Hiura. 1-20 over his past five games. Hope he can shake it off & get back to raking.

 

I wonder if he is fully recovered from his recent injury. Wasn't it hand related?

[Jenkins5]

Mini-slump for Hiura. 1-20 over his past five games. Hope he can shake it off & get back to raking.

 

Coming off injury not surprised, hope he finds it again soon. Like Trent Grisham, averages can bottom out quick. Grisham was at .250 & fell to .200 in a matter of a week

[Dadbauer]

Hiura now ranked #5 Overall in Baseball Prospectus Midseason top 50 prospects. Damn!

[Outlander]

Still intrigued with a call up this year however certainly don't want him incurring service time and wasting a spot on the 40 man during the off season if he is injured.

[Jenkins5]

Finally got his bounce back game tonight with 4-4 with HR game. Hopefully a sign he is heeled up & his timing is back

[Eye Black]

One takeaway from the current 2B situation is that I don’t think it is a position the Brewers are nearly as concerned about defensive profile as they are offensive production. Obviously having both are ideal, but while we hear about a focus on “up the middle defense”, I don’t think second base weighs heavily into that emphasis. I think we are close to the point where service time should be the only consideration holding Hiura back from playing 2B for the MLB team next year.

[KeithStone53151]

One takeaway from the current 2B situation is that I don’t think it is a position the Brewers are nearly as concerned about defensive profile as they are offensive production. Obviously having both are ideal, but while we hear about a focus on “up the middle defense”, I don’t think second base weighs heavily into that emphasis. I think we are close to the point where service time should be the only consideration holding Hiura back from playing 2B for the MLB team next year.

 

A large part of that is Arcia. My impression is that we are heavily relying on Arcia for the most difficult defensive position on any given pitch. He's playing in shallow right against lhb and his natural position against rhb. When Villar plays, he handles the shallow right assignment sometimes...whereas going forward I expect it to be only Arcia. It's definitely a new efficiency if it works out. To your point though, I generally agree. I get the impression that Hiura is a better defender(aside from arm strength) than Shaw or Moustakas already.

 

On a side note, Arcia would have immense value if he could simply hit for 700 ops given how heavily we are relying on him defensively. He's directly responsible for getting a significantly better bat in the lineup on a daily basis(assuming everything goes according to plan).

[jerichoholicninja]

One takeaway from the current 2B situation is that I don’t think it is a position the Brewers are nearly as concerned about defensive profile as they are offensive production. Obviously having both are ideal, but while we hear about a focus on “up the middle defense”, I don’t think second base weighs heavily into that emphasis. I think we are close to the point where service time should be the only consideration holding Hiura back from playing 2B for the MLB team next year.

 

A large part of that is Arcia. My impression is that we are heavily relying on Arcia for the most difficult defensive position on any given pitch. He's playing in shallow right against lhb and his natural position against rhb. When Villar plays, he handles the shallow right assignment sometimes...whereas going forward I expect it to be only Arcia. It's definitely a new efficiency if it works out. To your point though, I generally agree. I get the impression that Hiura is a better defender(aside from arm strength) than Shaw or Moustakas already.

 

On a side note, Arcia would have immense value if he could simply hit for 700 ops given how heavily we are relying on him defensively. He's directly responsible for getting a significantly better bat in the lineup on a daily basis(assuming everything goes according to plan).

 

Shallow right is always played by the 2B or 3B. Arcia plays right near the base when they shift against lefties.

[KeithStone53151]

One takeaway from the current 2B situation is that I don’t think it is a position the Brewers are nearly as concerned about defensive profile as they are offensive production. Obviously having both are ideal, but while we hear about a focus on “up the middle defense”, I don’t think second base weighs heavily into that emphasis. I think we are close to the point where service time should be the only consideration holding Hiura back from playing 2B for the MLB team next year.

 

A large part of that is Arcia. My impression is that we are heavily relying on Arcia for the most difficult defensive position on any given pitch. He's playing in shallow right against lhb and his natural position against rhb. When Villar plays, he handles the shallow right assignment sometimes...whereas going forward I expect it to be only Arcia. It's definitely a new efficiency if it works out. To your point though, I generally agree. I get the impression that Hiura is a better defender(aside from arm strength) than Shaw or Moustakas already.

 

On a side note, Arcia would have immense value if he could simply hit for 700 ops given how heavily we are relying on him defensively. He's directly responsible for getting a significantly better bat in the lineup on a daily basis(assuming everything goes according to plan).

 

Shallow right is always played by the 2B or 3B. Arcia plays right near the base when they shift against lefties.

 

You may want to double-check that, I'll do the same as I'm not 100% certain we are shifting that way...but I'm pretty sure Arcia has been playing that spot against lefties when we make the dramatic shift.

[jerichoholicninja]

You may want to double-check that, I'll do the same as I'm not 100% certain we are shifting that way...but I'm pretty sure Arcia has been playing that spot against lefties when we make the dramatic shift.

 

I am 99.9% sure Arcia stays on the dirt in the lefty shift. Putting him in the outfield would be a waste of his arm and more importantly his range.