Milwaukee Brewers Calling Keston Hiura Back Up
By Paul Bretl
After a down offensive year for Keston Hiura during the Milwaukee Brewers’ shortened 2020 season where he averaged .212 at the plate with a .707 OPS and a strikeout rate of almost 35 percent, that negative momentum, unfortunately, carried over to 2021. And actually, it was even worse.
Over 89 plate appearances this season, Hiura slashed .152/.247/.266, totaling a .512 OPS with a 36 percent K-rate and a wRC+ of 47—yikes. As I mentioned in a recent article I wrote about Hiura, if you head over to Baseball Savant, basically pick a metric, and Hiura is going to be well below the league average in it.
To make matters worse, a number of Hiura’s swings and misses were at pitchers that caught a large portion of the plate–which as you can imagine, is quite worrisome.
Ultimately this led to Hiura being sent down to Triple-A Nashville to work out whatever issues were plaguing him. At the time, manager Craig Counsell said it should be a short stay for Hiura, and that’s what it turned out to be, as he is reportedly being called back up to Milwaukee.
Keston Hiura is being called up by the Milwaukee Brewers, according to sources familiar with the situation.
— Robert Murray (@ByRobertMurray) May 24, 2021
Since being sent to Nashville, Hiura has been carrying a hot bat. In 38 plate appearances over nine games, Hiura is slashing .438/.526/.906 with a monster 1.433 OPS. He’s scorching the baseball, as evidenced by his .906 slugging percentage, hitting three home runs along with six doubles, and he has also drawn six walks.
The obvious hope is that with the return of Hiura to the lineup, he will bring that hot bat with him back to Milwaukee as this Brewers’ offense continues to rank as one of the worst in baseball in several major categories.
With that said, hopefully, things are beginning to turn around. The Brewers recently got Christian Yelich back, and he logged a couple of hits, including a home run, against Cincinnati on Sunday, and Milwaukee was able to win that series as well.
The Milwaukee Brewers (23-23) begin a four-game series at home on Monday against the NL West leading Padres (30-17), who are ninth in the MLB this season in total runs scored.