Keston Hiura arrived in the Milwaukee Brewers lineup in May of 2019, with his hittin’ shoes all the way on. In 84 games as a rookie (348 plate appearances), he had a .938 OPS (.303/.368/.570 slash-line, 138 OPS+) with 19 home runs, 49 RBI, 51 runs scored, 23 doubles and nine stolen bases.
Hiura struck out plenty (too much) in 2019 (30.7 percent), and it got worse in 2020 (34.6 percent) as his whiff rate rose 6.5 percent from 2019. With drops in exit velocity and hard hit rate, as well as trading some line drives (about four percent) for ground balls, 91 points of batting average went up in smoke last year (.212) as he struck a league-high 85 times. But Hiura’s barrel rate (according to Statcast) was nearly the same as 2019, which is a good sign. All the bad numbers make it easy to miss that he hit 13 home runs last year.
The Brewers have signed second baseman Kolten Wong in free agency. So Hiura will move to another position, and it’s been confirmed it’ll be first base by team president David Stearns.
Stearns confirms that Keston Hiura is moving to 1B. "We believe he can do this."
— Tom (@Haudricourt) February 5, 2021
Hiura is not a good fielder, so his position is nothing more than a number next to his name on manager Craig Counsell’s lineup card. He’s in the lineup for his bat. From a fantasy perspective, he’ll become multi-position eligible fairly early in the season. Check your league settings for specifics.
Hiura comes in as a top-5 fantasy second baseman right now, and Fantasy Pros’ ADP average has him at pick 64/65 right now. In recent 12-team mixed league draft of my own on Yahoo!, I got Hiura at pick No. 79.
As for a 2021 projection on Hiura, he’s got 30-90-90-10 upside (home runs, RBI, runs, stolen bases). I’m coming in lower across the board. To get to his home run and RBI numbers, I just took his 2019 second half plus the entire short 2020 (27 home runs, 72 RBI) and bumped it up a bit. At a possible discount on draft day, and with extra position eligibility coming, there’s a lot to like here.
Keston Hiura 2021 Projection: .253/.345/.480 slash-line, 28 HR, 82 RBI, 80 runs scored, 9 SB
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