The Struggle Is Real for Keston Hiura

Heading into the season, the Milwaukee Brewers were a popular pick to win the NL Central, with half of the writers here at FanGraphs expecting them to emerge victorious. The strength of the team is its pitching, with a rotation spearheaded by Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes as well as an excellent bullpen anchored by Josh Hader and 2020 NL Rookie of the Year Devin Williams. But there was a good deal of uncertainty about where the offense would come from and how much run support the strong pitching would receive. The shortened season saw Lorenzo Cain opt out and underwhelming performances from perennial MVP candidate Christian Yelich and infielder Keston Hiura. ZiPS (along with many other models) projected bounce-back campaigns for both Yelich and Hiura. These two sluggers’ ability to produce is critical to the Brewers’ success this season.

Yelich has not gotten off to a great start and has already missed 12 games due to back issues, which he’s dealt with previously in his career. But it’s Hiura that I want to put the spotlight on. In his rookie season, Hiura took the National League by storm, slashing .303/.368/.570 while hitting 19 home runs; he was second on the team to Yelich with 140 wRC+. Hiura entered the 2020 season expected to hold down the keystone and contribute as a key power bat in the lineup. Yet as was the case for so many hitters in the pandemic-shortened season, Hiura took a step backwards from his prior year’s performance. He managed a disappointing but still respectable 87 wRC+ and 13 home runs, but he struck out more. He walked less. His hard hit rate plummeted from 47.1% to 39.6%.

Nearly a month into the 2021 season, Hiura’s offensive performance has fallen short of even last season’s paltry marks. Through last weekend’s action, he is slashing .145/.264/.242 with a wOBA of .240 and 50 wRC+. One area that is a complete disaster for Hiura is his contact rate. To truly capture the magnitude of his issues, one must look beyond his strikeout rate (34.7%, which is really bad) to Z-Contact%, which is the percentage of balls a hitter makes contact with when he swings at pitches in the strike zone. So far in the early going, Hiura has the worst Z-Contact% in baseball, lagging behind Javier Báez by about 2.5%. Recently, Brewers hitting instructor Andy Haines mentioned Hiura’s timing is off but that he’s “getting closer every day.” While his coaches may express some optimism, any progress has yet to find its way onto the field. Here’s a sample of some swings and misses against the Cubs’ Kyle Ryan.

Ryan primarily sees mop-up action out of the bullpen. He threw four straight sinkers to Hiura, a pitch that induces a swinging strike on 7% of swings dating back to the 2019 season. These are pitches that even in the early part of the season, where he’s still working out timing issues, Hiura should be making hard contact on. He eventually rolled a groundball to shortstop to end the inning.

Haines is probably aware that Hiura’s contact struggles aren’t entirely new. In 2020, his Z-Contact% was the lowest in baseball by a sizable margin.

Worst Contact in the Zone in 2020
Rank Name Team Z-Contact%
1 Keston Hiura MIL 67.9%
2 Joey Gallo TEX 72.3%
3 Willy Adames TBR 73.2%
4 Adalberto Mondesi KCR 73.3%
5 Matt Olson OAK 74.3%

Hiura’s Z-Contact% of 67.9% last season is the worst mark among qualified hitters by more than 3% dating back to 2015, with the second worst being Joey Gallo’s 71.5% in 2017. His average Z-Contact% over the course of 2020 and ’21 is 66.7%, which is over a 10% drop from his rookie season rate of 76.9%.

It’s difficult to perform well at the plate when you struggle to make contact in the zone, but Z-Contact% alone does not explain why his contact issues translate to such dismal hitting statistics. Hitters who do not make good contact can make up for it with the quality of contact they do make and drawing walks. Gallo, for example, is always near the top of the K% leaderboard, but he carries an above average walk rate and hits a lot of home runs to go along with his strikeouts. While his 2017 campaign was an awful year for contact, he finished that season with a wOBA of .364 and wRC+ of 119 despite the second highest strikeout rate in the majors (36.8%) thanks in large part to walking 14.1% of the time and slugging .537. And he’s not alone; there have been a few sluggers who have performed above league average despite severe contact issues.

Batting Leaders with >35 K%
Season Name Team PA BB% K% SLG wRC+
2015 Miguel Sanó MIN 335 15.8% 35.5% 0.530 149
2019 Joey Gallo TEX 297 17.5% 38.4% 0.598 144
2019 Miguel Sanó MIN 439 12.5% 36.2% 0.576 137
2017 Mike Zunino SEA 435 9.0% 36.8% 0.509 126
2017 Miguel Sanó MIN 483 11.2% 35.8% 0.507 125
Hitters with at least 100 plate appearances in a season dating back to 2015.

Hiura’s ability to draw walks has never been a big part of his game; if there’s a bright spot in his offensive performance so far in 2021, it’s that he’s on pace for the best walk rate of his career with 8.3%. But to compensate for his contact issues, he’s going to have to hit for power. As a prospect, Hiura was lauded for his bat-to-ball skills and plus power at the plate. According to Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel, “He has lightning-quick hands that square up premium velocity and possesses a rare blend of power and bat control.” The power just hasn’t shown up so far this season. Hiura is slugging .242 with a grand total of one homer and three doubles. That is a long way to fall from slugging .570 as a rookie. Despite this, his Statcast data shows similar average exit velocity to what he’s demonstrated in 2019 and ’20.

Why such a big drop in power? It’s what happens to the ball once it hits the bat, specifically on fly balls. His infield fly ball rate has nearly doubled from his 2019-20 average of 8.5% to 15.4%, while his home run per fly ball (HR/FB) has decreased significantly from 24.8% to 7.7%, though to be fair, he’s only hit one home run and these rates don’t stabilize particularly quickly. Another way to look at his fly ball outcomes is by batted ball direction. Hiura distributes his hits well to all fields, but he’s been hitting the ball in the air to the right side (47.8% in ’21) much more often than he typically does (37.3% in ’20). Hitters typically generate more power to their pull side and up the middle rather than to the opposite field, so an increased propensity to hit opposite field fly balls is also going against Hiura.

Keston Hiura is an unusual breed of hitter. He doesn’t have the patience or batting eye that will drive his on base percentage by drawing a lot of walks. However, he hasn’t shown he has the hit tool to compensate for his lack of patience either. If we look at the last 10 seasons of players with a BB% less than 10, a K% greater than 35, and at least 300 plate appearances, there are only two hitters who have managed a wRC+ greater than 100: Mike Zunino in 2017 and Juan Francisco in 2014. It’s a rare position to be in and still succeed as a hitter. The odds are against Hiura maintaining his current level of plate discipline and achieving the performance the Brewers expected when they signed Kolten Wong and moved Hiura to first base, where the offensive bar is higher.

Is it possible for Hiura to dig out of this hole and return to his hitting ways of 2019? At age 24, his plus bat speed and power shouldn’t decline anytime soon. And really, there is nowhere to go but up for his poor contact rates to start the season. The Brewers are committed to giving Hiura the opportunities at the plate to turn things around, but unless he makes some drastic improvements, his Z-Contact% will continue to be at or near the lowest in the majors. During the 2018 season, Matt Olson experienced an early season slump where his Z-Contact% was well below his career average (65.4% for the month of April). He was able to fight through his contact issues and rebounded to have an excellent 2018 season finishing with a wRC+ of 119 and 3.5 WAR. It’s too early to rule out a similar turnaround for Hiura, but he has a long way to go to get there.





Chet is a contributor for FanGraphs. Prior to FanGraphs, he wrote for Purple Row. When not writing about baseball, he is a data scientist and outdoor sport enthusiast. He can be found on Twitter at @cgutwein.

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Alex
2 years ago

Is an 87 WRC+ really respectable? Add in hard contact plummeting and walking even less and that is a horrible year not a respectable one.

proiste
2 years ago
Reply to  Alex

For a second baseman with Kolten Wong defense or a solid catcher, I’d say an 87 wRC+ would be “respectable”.

Certainly not with Hiura’s defense though

LenFuego
2 years ago
Reply to  Alex

I took him to mean something like “not disastrous” when he used the word respectable there.