Why you Should Immediately Add Brewers Keston Hiura to Your Fantasy Team
Hiura, owned in 13% of Yahoo and 2% of ESPN leagues received his MLB call-up today. Thus far in 2019 the 22-year-old has 11 homers in 129 AAA AB’s in a not homer friendly Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium (6 HR home and 5 away). While this, a .333 AVG, .408 OBP, .698 SLG, 3.2% IFFB% (!!) are all great things, what jumps off the page to me most is how the young AAAer has walked 10 times and struck out 8 times in his last 47 MiLB plate appearances (3 HR & 3 2B in that span). It’s apparent he’s a quick learner and that likely played a role in the Brewers decision to call him up.
Last season I interviewed a dozen MiLB broadcasters and asked them which prospect stuck out to them most, I heard a lot of “Juan Soto”, however I only heard one “Keston Hiura” from Lynchburg Hillcats PbP Max Gun. Lynchburg is an Indians affiliate, hat tip to Max.
There are some things to keep an eye on, such as a sky high .405 BABIP even though it appears he may be able to play to a high .300’s mark. It’s possible he hits the ball so hard that he defies typical BABIP regression (see Javy Baez). His AAA SwStr% is 13.3%, which definitely had a lot to do with him striking out 22 times in his first 51 AAA AB’s. Every player has AAA growing pains, I believe a brief AAA stint for every hitting prospect is good because AAA is like MLB light in that pitchers locate well similar to big leaguers, but usually don’t have big league stuff. In my opinion, said AAA stint makes the transition to MLB easier.
Hiura is a 9th overall pick in the 2017 MLB Draft and kudos to the Brewers for giving him a shot at a young age to maximize his peak.
Thank you to Fangraphs for the Data and to Fox Sports for the Featured Image and Medium for the image above.