Article: The Curious Case of Keston Hiura: What Will His Role Be in 2023?

[Sweaty]

On 12/27/2022 at 9:44 AM, Jopal78 said:

Since arbitration salaries are not guaranteed until opening day there is no risk for Milwaukee bringing him to camp as depth.

 

 

 

 

 

This actually changed in the latest CBA.  Arbitration salaries are fully guaranteed.

[Jim French Stepstool]

It gives me the cold sweats thinking about Hiura making the team & being the 26th man, because to some fans the resulting sporadic ABs that role causes will be "the reason" why he isn't hitting. Would much rather see him dealt, which is much easier said than done.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

6 hours ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

It gives me the cold sweats thinking about Hiura making the team & being the 26th man, because to some fans the resulting sporadic ABs that role causes will be "the reason" why he isn't hitting. Would much rather see him dealt, which is much easier said than done.

Right ... it takes two to tango, and every other team in the majors has seen Keston put up three seasons of pretty terrible ABs now. But all it takes is one team who believes they can fix him I suppose.

[Sweaty]

Some of the players with a lower OPS than Hiura in 2022:

Ronald Acuna

Willy Adames

Giancarlo Stanton

Dalton Varsho

Christian Yelich

Tim Anderson

[Brewcrew82]

1 hour ago, Sweaty said:

Some of the players with a lower OPS than Hiura in 2022:

Ronald Acuna

Willy Adames

Giancarlo Stanton

Dalton Varsho

Christian Yelich

Tim Anderson

In a similar # of PAs, though???

[sveumrules]

10 minutes ago, Sweaty said:

Some of the players with a lower OPS than Hiura in 2022:

Ronald Acuna (2.2 WAR)

Willy Adames (4.7 WAR)

Giancarlo Stanton (1.2 WAR)

Dalton Varsho (4.6 WAR)

Christian Yelich (2.3 WAR)

Tim Anderson (2.0 WAR)

Yet, they all finished with higher WAR than Keston (0.8).

OPS is only one portion of a players value.

If a player can’t field a position, and strikes out 41.7% of the time (worst in 2022 min 250 PA), its difficult to get consistent playing time.

[Robocaller]

34 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

Yet, they all finished with higher WAR than Keston (0.8).

OPS is only one portion of a players value.

If a player can’t field a position, and strikes out 41.7% of the time (worst in 2022 min 250 PA), its difficult to get consistent playing time.

WAR is a counting stat, and those other guys played more.

[sveumrules]

9 minutes ago, Robocaller said:

WAR is a counting stat, and those other guys played more.

Right, because all of them (except Giancarlo) can field a position and none of them struck out thee very most out of the 317 players with at least 250 PA in 2022.

Keston’s lack of playing time is tied directly to those two factors.

The reason say Joey Gallo, gets more playing time than Keston despite them both being high strikeout power hitters is because Gallo walks more (16.0 BB% from 2019-22 vs 7.4% for Hiura), slugs more (.249 ISO vs .216 ISO) and fields better (+37 DRS vs -16 DRS).

[Robocaller]

8 hours ago, sveumrules said:

Right, because all of them (except Giancarlo) can field a position and none of them struck out thee very most out of the 317 players with at least 250 PA in 2022.

Keston’s lack of playing time is tied directly to those two factors.

The reason say Joey Gallo, gets more playing time than Keston despite them both being high strikeout power hitters is because Gallo walks more (16.0 BB% from 2019-22 vs 7.4% for Hiura), slugs more (.249 ISO vs .216 ISO) and fields better (+37 DRS vs -16 DRS).

Or maybe because Hiura was so badly managed, continually getting starts against LHP. He should have had at least 20 more starts at DH against RHP (and more than that if he kept up his production).

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

4 hours ago, Robocaller said:

Or maybe because Hiura was so badly managed, continually getting starts against LHP. He should have had at least 20 more starts at DH against RHP (and more than that if he kept up his production).

The guy is an enigma, plain and simple. He's a RHH who can't touch lefties, strikes out at an astronomical, excess Rob Deer-like rate and plays defense about as well as I do with my 42-year-old body and bad knee. Maybe we need to accept that, while he maybe was a little mismanaged last year, perhaps he's also simply not very good.

[TURBO]

2 hours ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

The guy is an enigma, plain and simple. He's a RHH who can't touch lefties, strikes out at an astronomical, excess Rob Deer-like rate and plays defense about as well as I do with my 42-year-old body and bad knee. Maybe we need to accept that, while he maybe was a little mismanaged last year, perhaps he's also simply not very good.

Had he been managed correctly (started at DH against all righties, kept off the field defensively unless an emergency occurred), I tend to think his numbers would have been even better.

The fact he was mismanaged so harshly had a detrimental effect on all his stats, and I mean ALL of them.

If we keep him this year, it would be nice to play him at his true strengths only, and not try and jam him into playing time that we know he will fail at.  CC has to be accountable for this, it's his job to figure things out.

If CC can't do it, then Hiura needs to be moved, because the way he was used last year hurt us.  Bat the dude against righties only and I think we'd see an uptick in his value, and he would help us win some games.

[wiguy94]

Why do people continue to harp on Hiura being mismanaged? The one time all year that he got a steady run of games in August he absolutely tanked his numbers and was horrible. CC managed him really well (other than the continued AB against LHP) to get the production he did out of Hiura despite having the worst K% in the MLB. 

[TURBO]

2 hours ago, wiguy94 said:

Why do people continue to harp on Hiura being mismanaged? The one time all year that he got a steady run of games in August he absolutely tanked his numbers and was horrible. CC managed him really well (other than the continued AB against LHP) to get the production he did out of Hiura despite having the worst K% in the MLB. 

Because he WAS mismanaged, that is the reason why.

He had one stretch of what, 15 games with regular playing time, way too small of a sample to determine anything.

The glaring error was continuously batting him against lefties because all righties hit lefties well.  CC refused to look at his splits and just kept banging away when everyone but him knew it wasn't working.

Hiura was mismanaged for the entire 2022 season.

[Brewcrew82]

3 hours ago, TURBO said:

Had he been managed correctly (started at DH against all righties, kept off the field defensively unless an emergency occurred), I tend to think his numbers would have been even better.

His league worst K%, BABIP, HR-FB ratio, and expected stats indicate the exact opposite...And his numbers already declined in August/September...

[TURBO]

15 minutes ago, Brewcrew82 said:

His league worst K%, BABIP, HR-FB ratio, and expected stats indicate the exact opposite...And his numbers already declined in August/September...

We will never know will we. 

Expected stats mean nothing, the only way to settle this argument is if we got to see what would have happened had he been managed correctly, and that is impossible, no matter what the expected stats say.

[Brewcrew82]

2 minutes ago, TURBO said:

We will never know will we. 

Expected stats mean nothing, the only way to settle this argument is if we got to see what would have happened had he been managed correctly, and that is impossible, no matter what the expected stats say.

I disagree. A league worst K%, an insanely high BABIP and HR-FB ratio, allow you to draw meaningful conclusions about a player's likely future production. Brewers obviously used that information in deciding to limit Hiura's playing time. 

I didn't agree with them playing Hiura so frequently against LHP, but Hiura is really hurt by the fact that he's an awful defender. 

[sveumrules]

4 hours ago, TURBO said:

Had he been managed correctly (started at DH against all righties, kept off the field defensively unless an emergency occurred), I tend to think his numbers would have been even better.

The fact he was mismanaged so harshly had a detrimental effect on all his stats, and I mean ALL of them.

From 2020-21 there were 263 players with at least 400 PA. Hiura ranked 250th by wRC+ (72) and 3rd in K% (36.6%). He hadn't done anything to earn regular playing time entering 2022.

Over the first month (4/7 to 5/5) of the season he posted a 97 wRC+ and 47.6 K% before being sent down to AAA.

Upon his return he was scorching hot for 10 days (228 wRC+ | only 31.6 K%) from 5/18 to 5/28 followed up by going ice cold for 10 days (46 wRC+ | 54.8 K%) from 5/30 to 6/9 which earned him a week off. 

He bounced back alright over the next two months of sporadic playing time with a 184 wRC+ and 38.5 K% over 78 PA from 6/15 to 8/22 with a month at AAA mixed in.

However, as it typically is with Keston it was too good to be true and he finished the season with a 63 wRC+ and 39.8 K% over his final 93 PA from 8/23 to 10/5.