Milwaukee Brewers Option Keston Hiura to Triple-A Nashville

The Milwaukee Brewers announced a few roster moves on Friday prior to beginning their series in Atlanta. The Crew would call up right-handed pitcher Luis Perdomo from Triple-A Nashville, and to make room for him on the roster, Milwaukee would send down Keston Hiura to Nashville as the corresponding move.

In 15 games this season, Hiura was slashing .216/.310/.378 over 42 plate appearances with a pair of home runs and an OPS+ of 98, which is slightly below league average and well above where he was at a season ago.

Hiura is drawing walks at a higher rate than what he has in the past, but strikeouts still remain a major issue as he has struck out on a whopping 47.6% of his at-bats this season, according to Fangraphs.

However, even as he continues to battle the ups and downs, I imagine in a perfect world that the Milwaukee Brewers would prefer to keep him on the big league roster if they could, but there are a few reasons — outside of his production — why sending him to Nashville at this time made sense.

There are several reasons why the Milwaukee Brewers optioned Keston Hiura to Nashville.

For one, Rowdy Tellez has shown that he should be the everyday first baseman as he has been the most productive member of this Brewers offense this season.

Over 88 plate appearances, Tellez is batting .275 with an eye-popping .625 slugging percentage and an OPS of .966 along with an OPS+ of 173–remember, 100 is league average. Tellez has also hit seven home runs, including four in the last five games and seven doubles–not to mention that he has been effective against both right and left-handed pitching, with an OPS of .984 against righties and .886 verse lefties.

The other two likely reasons behind this move are that Jake Cousins is still on the 10-day IL while the Brewers have 33 games over the next 34 days–so pitching depth is going to be very important over that stretch. On top of that, Hiura still has options remaining, and this will give him the opportunity to get consistent at-bats with the Sound.

Milwaukee’s addition to the bullpen, Perdomo, had spent his big league career with San Diego through the 2020 season. During that five-year span, Perdomo appeared in 133 games, including 61 starts, and posted a 5.19 ERA with a FIP of 4.44 and a strikeout rate of 16.9%.

The Crew signed Perdomo last offseason to a two-year minor league deal. He would spend the 2021 season rehabbing from Tommy John surgery.