The struggles of Yelich and Hiura - Let the numbers talk!

[monty57]

I remember back a couple of years when a lot of Brewer fans were giving up on Burnes. Sometimes talented players have setbacks when they hit the MLB level, and leaving them in the majors doesn't help.

 

There's nothing wrong with sending Hiura back to the minors for as long as it takes. I believe he has this year plus two more option years that we could keep him in the minors, so there is no reason to think that he's going to be out of the organization and come back strong with another team... at least not any time soon.

 

He's lost right now, and hopefully he will figure things out and come back as the player we all know he can be, but I don't think he's going to get straightened out in the majors. He needs an extended trip to the minors.

[Sixtofan]

Fully agree with Hiura - let him go down to AAA and try to figure it out. Lots of potential still there, just needs to find it again. Failing night after night at the MLB level is not doing him any good. He is a potential long term asset.

[Bulldogboy]

Let's be clear where we are with Hiura. He is off to one of the worst starts through the month of May of anyone in mlb history. It is historic how bad he has been when you factor in the k%.Chris Davis of the orioles comes to mind and did he suddenly snap out of it and remember how to hit?? The likelihood of Hiura when you combine this year and last year suddenly becoming a quality mlb regular is way below 50%. I would give him a 25% chance of just being average again. It is too late imo. It just isn't going to happen at least not in Milwaukee.

[Bulldogboy]

Yelich is by far the bigger concern that I have.

 

A 9 year $214 million contract for a guy who appears to be a singles hitter at best is pretty darn scary for a small market. Yes, he can still run but man his approach since his knee injury has sapped him of not only his power but also his ability to hit for average. If he were just the Yelich of Miami, a .290 ish hitter with 20+ HR potential, while overpaid he would still be solid. The man has 3(!) extra base hits all season in 88 PA, (1 double, 1 triple and 1 home run). Wong and Taylor had 2 each last night alone.

 

I don't think Yelich will ever be what he was but my gosh what a dramatic and unforeseen fall.

This is so true. It has been overshadowed a bit but make no mistake this is the major issue for the brewers moving forward. Two years removed from injury the guy is a shell.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Let's be clear where we are with Hiura. He is off to one of the worst starts through the month of May of anyone in mlb history. It is historic how bad he has been when you factor in the k%.Chris Davis of the orioles comes to mind and did he suddenly snap out of it and remember how to hit?? The likelihood of Hiura when you combine this year and last year suddenly becoming a quality mlb regular is way below 50%. I would give him a 25% chance of just being average again. It is too late imo. It just isn't going to happen at least not in Milwaukee.

 

The optimist in me keeps telling myself "he's only 24, he can turn it around", but with each at-bat, I am coming to this realization. Which sucks. It sucks terribly. I don't know anymore if it is Hiura's approach, fundamentals, coaching (or lack thereof) or something else, but all I know is that after witnessing the last two months, and last year's two-month season, it appears that the Hiura we saw in 2019 was a complete mirage. A hitter that can't hit a belt-high 92 mph fastball has no business playing professional baseball. Hiura is going to have to look deep to figure out if the player we are seeing is who he is, or if there is something more there that is being hidden right now.

[sveumrules]

Yelich is by far the bigger concern that I have.

 

A 9 year $214 million contract for a guy who appears to be a singles hitter at best is pretty darn scary for a small market. Yes, he can still run but man his approach since his knee injury has sapped him of not only his power but also his ability to hit for average. If he were just the Yelich of Miami, a .290 ish hitter with 20+ HR potential, while overpaid he would still be solid. The man has 3(!) extra base hits all season in 88 PA, (1 double, 1 triple and 1 home run). Wong and Taylor had 2 each last night alone.

 

I don't think Yelich will ever be what he was but my gosh what a dramatic and unforeseen fall.

 

This is so true. It has been overshadowed a bit but make no mistake this is the major issue for the brewers moving forward. Two years removed from injury the guy is a shell.

 

While it's been "two years" (or 21 months, whatever) since Yelich shattered his knee cap, he's only played 81 games in that time on account of a global pandemic & back flare up.

 

Half a season is a small sample in & of itself, but once you add in the mitigating circumstances the sample becomes even noisier/less reliable.

 

Christian's publicly available projections currently range from 133 to 147 wRC+, so it's a pretty good bet his end of season mark should end up higher than the 110 he is currently sporting.

[xisxisxis]

Sounds like patience is running thin with Hiura based on CCs comments last night. Not sure how much longer you can keep rolling him out there.

 

Doesn't help his case when Taylor returns from a handful of days raking at AAA and immediately breaks out of his pre-demotion funk with two bombs off pitchers that baffled Hiura.

At this point a T-ball would baffle Hiura...

[Bulldogboy]

Let's be clear where we are with Hiura. He is off to one of the worst starts through the month of May of anyone in mlb history. It is historic how bad he has been when you factor in the k%.Chris Davis of the orioles comes to mind and did he suddenly snap out of it and remember how to hit?? The likelihood of Hiura when you combine this year and last year suddenly becoming a quality mlb regular is way below 50%. I would give him a 25% chance of just being average again. It is too late imo. It just isn't going to happen at least not in Milwaukee.

 

The optimist in me keeps telling myself "he's only 24, he can turn it around", but with each at-bat, I am coming to this realization. Which sucks. It sucks terribly. I don't know anymore if it is Hiura's approach, fundamentals, coaching (or lack thereof) or something else, but all I know is that after witnessing the last two months, and last year's two-month season, it appears that the Hiura we saw in 2019 was a complete mirage. A hitter that can't hit a belt-high 92 mph fastball has no business playing professional baseball. Hiura is going to have to look deep to figure out if the player we are seeing is who he is, or if there is something more there that is being hidden right now.

Agreed. It is a strange situation given that he basically has been sold as a bat first prospect since being drafted. If anything it was his defense that gave you pause but you figured he would always hit. The approach is an issue but unlike say Orlando Arcia who can't stay away from pitches breaking away from him Hiura can't hit fastballs right down the middle. That is a totally different ballgame and one that is a career killing one if you ask me.

[brewers888]

I would guess that having a good hitting coach would help these two players make the proper adjustments but Stearns insists on keeping Haines when its 100% clear that he is incompetent.

[homer]

After playing 37 games in 2018, Yelich had an OPS less than .800

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

I would guess that having a good hitting coach would help these two players make the proper adjustments but Stearns insists on keeping Haines when its 100% clear that he is incompetent.

 

So was Yelich being coached by bizarro Andy Haines in 2019, when he was actually better than his MVP 2018 season?

[sveumrules]

I would guess that having a good hitting coach would help these two players make the proper adjustments but Stearns insists on keeping Haines when its 100% clear that he is incompetent.

 

How is that 100% clear?

 

Narvaez & Garcia have both rebounded from 2020, just like regression to the mean predicted they would.

 

Wong, Urias, Pina, Adames are all hitting at or above their career norms.

 

Sure, he isn't hitting much this year, but on the whole Vogelbach still has a 109 OPS+ with the Brewers compared to a 95 for his career.

 

Yelich is currently underperforming, but it's a sample of 81 games coming back from injury, hardly definitive of anything.

 

The only guys massively underperforming are JBJ & Hiura, I guess you could throw Shaw in there as well, but he was a reclamation project on a minor league deal to begin with, so its not like expectations were sky high.

[monty57]

Narvaez adopted a big, uppercut swing last season and all offseason there were posts about how the Brewers should cut him. He worked with Haines this offseason, changed his swing to stop trying to hit home runs every time up, and is having his best season ever. It's fixable.

 

Uppercut swings leave a huge hole for high fastballs. The "launch angle" craze is a big reason why pitchers have started throwing high fastballs so often. Some hitters have revitalized their careers after modifying their swing for "launch angle," but obviously it hasn't worked for Hiura. Send him down and tell him he won't be back until he listens to his coaches, gets rid of the "softball" uppercut, and cuts his K's down to a respectable (for 2021) level.

 

Maybe he'll never figure it out and he'll be a bust, but it's way too early to give up on him. Heck, if some posters were in charge, we'd have cut Burnes, Narvaez and Garcia within the past couple of seasons. Sometimes guys go through rough stretches - sometimes really rough. If you have hope that someone can be a part of your future, you need to give him a chance to get through these stretches, and thankfully Hiura has options so he can figure things out in AAA.

[wildcat2237]

Don't know that working on his Ks is realistic. He's always been a K machine. He just used to make it count when he did hit the ball.

 

I am of the opinion that he is going to need to go to AAA and completely rework his approach in favor of more contact. If some of the power goes out the window so be it. You cannot K at a 40% clip and make it in the big leagues.

 

Also doesn't help that he is known as a bad fielder.

[DHonks]

There was a great article the other day in the Athletic in which it talked about the problem for hitters these days, and Hiura fits the profile. Basically:

-for generations, pitchers were told to throw sinkers down and away...focus on the bottom of the zone

-until around 2000, the pitch above the belt wasn't called a strike, and definitely no breaking balls that high. Now the upper part of the letters is called a strike consistently.

-hitters adapted by utilizing launch monitors and tailoring their swings with a healthy uppercut to crush pitches down low

-teams adapted by scrapping sinkers and switching to 4-seamers, cutters, and high breaking pitches.

-This results in pitchers having an extreme comfort zone from the belt-up, but hitters liking balls from the belt down.

-Teams need to prioritize situational hitting and linedrive hitters to counteract this new strike zone and pitching analytical approach. guys like Overbay, Loretta, Cirillo, Mueller, Gwynn, etc would be spraying these high pitches to all fields for doubles, but guys with today's hitting mechanics simply can't hit these pitches unless they are guessing, which opens them up to looking foolish on low breaking balls

[owbc]

There was a great article the other day in the Athletic in which it talked about the problem for hitters these days, and Hiura fits the profile. Basically:

-for generations, pitchers were told to throw sinkers down and away...focus on the bottom of the zone

-until around 2000, the pitch above the belt wasn't called a strike, and definitely no breaking balls that high. Now the upper part of the letters is called a strike consistently.

-hitters adapted by utilizing launch monitors and tailoring their swings with a healthy uppercut to crush pitches down low

-teams adapted by scrapping sinkers and switching to 4-seamers, cutters, and high breaking pitches.

-This results in pitchers having an extreme comfort zone from the belt-up, but hitters liking balls from the belt down.

-Teams need to prioritize situational hitting and linedrive hitters to counteract this new strike zone and pitching analytical approach. guys like Overbay, Loretta, Cirillo, Mueller, Gwynn, etc would be spraying these high pitches to all fields for doubles, but guys with today's hitting mechanics simply can't hit these pitches unless they are guessing, which opens them up to looking foolish on low breaking balls

 

Interesting stuff. Hiura is the first Brewers prospect I've seen that epitomizes the post-analytics approach to hitting. He really only has one swing mode -- hard, all of the time -- and with an uppercut optimized for launch angle. Between that and the timing issues it makes him a one trick pony at the plate and he has shown zero ability to adapt his swing to hit the high pitches. Monty's Narvaez comparison makes a ton of sense in this context. I know it's not a popular opinion but if I were the Brewers I would think about trading Hiura at the deadline.

 

Yelich...I'm worried like everyone else, but at least it hasn't hurt the team to have Yelich in the lineup the way that it does to play Hiura. -1.2 bWAR, 3rd worst in MLB. At least Yelich has been replacement level.

[dlk9s]

Hitting coaches are great until they're not. They're basically interchangeable.

[josh]

I remember back a couple of years when a lot of Brewer fans were giving up on Burnes. Sometimes talented players have setbacks when they hit the MLB level, and leaving them in the majors doesn't help.

 

They need a hitting lab, eh.

[DHonks]

There was a great article the other day in the Athletic in which it talked about the problem for hitters these days, and Hiura fits the profile. Basically:

-for generations, pitchers were told to throw sinkers down and away...focus on the bottom of the zone

-until around 2000, the pitch above the belt wasn't called a strike, and definitely no breaking balls that high. Now the upper part of the letters is called a strike consistently.

-hitters adapted by utilizing launch monitors and tailoring their swings with a healthy uppercut to crush pitches down low

-teams adapted by scrapping sinkers and switching to 4-seamers, cutters, and high breaking pitches.

-This results in pitchers having an extreme comfort zone from the belt-up, but hitters liking balls from the belt down.

-Teams need to prioritize situational hitting and linedrive hitters to counteract this new strike zone and pitching analytical approach. guys like Overbay, Loretta, Cirillo, Mueller, Gwynn, etc would be spraying these high pitches to all fields for doubles, but guys with today's hitting mechanics simply can't hit these pitches unless they are guessing, which opens them up to looking foolish on low breaking balls

 

Interesting stuff. Hiura is the first Brewers prospect I've seen that epitomizes the post-analytics approach to hitting. He really only has one swing mode -- hard, all of the time -- and with an uppercut optimized for launch angle. Between that and the timing issues it makes him a one trick pony at the plate and he has shown zero ability to adapt his swing to hit the high pitches. Monty's Narvaez comparison makes a ton of sense in this context. I know it's not a popular opinion but if I were the Brewers I would think about trading Hiura at the deadline.

 

Yelich...I'm worried like everyone else, but at least it hasn't hurt the team to have Yelich in the lineup the way that it does to play Hiura. -1.2 bWAR, 3rd worst in MLB. At least Yelich has been replacement level.

 

Would Jenkins be able to hit .100 in MLB today with his violent one-handed uppercut? I think his swing was very close to the statcast/trackman ideal swing of 3-4 years ago. And he didn't have to deal with pitches above the belt being called strikes. The problem is that pitchers have learned how to tweak mechanics in-game and daily, but most hitters require a major overhaul. Go back to when Hiura started being exposed last year. He started seeing early count fastballs barely scraping the letters called strikes. This was happening every game. Then he'd try swinging at those and simply couldn't touch them, requiring him to guess pitches to speed up his bat. That left him exposed to low-breaking balls. Once he was caught looking up and down, he became such a mess that a fastball down the middle baffled him. I'm no hitting coach, but how might I try addressing this? Two things come to mind:

-asking him to crouch more (at the waist), thus bringing the top part of his zone closer to belt-high. Think Rickey Henderson. Normally Hiura is VERY upright. This wouldn't be a hard tweak.

-Ask him to focus on meeting the ball with a level swing, although this would be very had to accomplish in-season.

[Baldkin]

Hiura: 1-23 with 13K and 2BB in 27 PA since he got called back up. .163 OPS

Yelich: 6-38 with 9BB in 47 PA since coming off the DL (the second time). .609 OPS

[wntrtxn21]

Hiura: 1-23 with 13K and 2BB in 27 PA since he got called back up. .163 OPS

Yelich: 6-38 with 9BB in 47 PA since coming off the DL (the second time). .609 OPS

 

Update on Hiura: 1-30 / 16Ks/ 2 BBs

Update on Yelich: 8-42 / 18Ks / 9 BBs / 1 HR / 4 RBIs

[Underachiever]

Hiura: 1-23 with 13K and 2BB in 27 PA since he got called back up. .163 OPS

Yelich: 6-38 with 9BB in 47 PA since coming off the DL (the second time). .609 OPS

 

Update on Hiura: 1-30 / 16Ks/ 2 BBs

Update on Yelich: 8-42 / 18Ks / 9 BBs / 1 HR / 4 RBIs

You forgot to calculate Hiura's OPS for me, so how can I know if that is a good or bad stat line?

[Boomer5]

Hiura: 1-23 with 13K and 2BB in 27 PA since he got called back up. .163 OPS

Yelich: 6-38 with 9BB in 47 PA since coming off the DL (the second time). .609 OPS

 

Update on Hiura: 1-30 / 16Ks/ 2 BBs

Update on Yelich: 8-42 / 18Ks / 9 BBs / 1 HR / 4 RBIs

You forgot to calculate Hiura's OPS for me, so how can I know if that is a good or bad stat line?

 

I legitimately did a spit take. Well played.

[Simba2020]

At this point I think 2019 Hiura was a product of three things. Pitchers not knowing how best to attack his flawed swing, the 2019 baseball, and a BABIP that was over .400. Take away the luck, a baseball that was a joke, and the lack of familiarity from the pitchers, and this is what you have left. A very flawed hitter that strikes out too much to succeed at the big league level.

[owbc]

Hiura: 1-23 with 13K and 2BB in 27 PA since he got called back up. .163 OPS

Yelich: 6-38 with 9BB in 47 PA since coming off the DL (the second time). .609 OPS

 

Update on Hiura: 1-30 / 16Ks/ 2 BBs

Update on Yelich: 8-42 / 18Ks / 9 BBs / 1 HR / 4 RBIs

You forgot to calculate Hiura's OPS for me, so how can I know if that is a good or bad stat line?

 

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