Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Keston Hiura had a baffling 2022 season.
The former first-round pick has struggled to find his footing and has bounced between MLB and Triple-A Nashville several times this season in search of consistent playing time. Although his season had its ups, it also had many downs.
However, there is some data to show that Brewers slugger Keston Hiura’s struggles may not be down to an evil eye, but rather an inability to put the bat on the ball.
Hiura has raw numbers that look good, with a 131 wRC+ on the season. But this mark can be misleading because Hiura has a 59 wRC+ against LHP and a 191 wRC+ against RHP. That, combined with Hiura’s 43.6% strikeout rate, has left him on the outside looking for playing time as Rowdy Tellez has seen the lion’s share of 1B this season after taking the peloton control early.
Coming into play on Tuesday, there were 16 batters who have at least 100 plate appearances and a strikeout rate above 35.0%. Hiura is one of them and has the highest strikeout rate of all these hitters.
Of those 16 hitters, Hiura has the 7th lowest swing rate on pitches out of the zone (32.2%), meaning he only swings about a third of the pitches that FanGraphs rules as out of the strike zone. This actually matches the median O-Swing% of 32.4% (min 100 AP).
As a fun note, Jose Ramirez, who has a strikeout rate of just 9.8%, has the same O-Swing% as Hiura.
Where Keston deviates is his contact rate on courts outside the zone (O-Contact%). Hiura’s O-Contact % is 48.2%, well below the median of 63.5%, and 16th lowest among all hitters (min 100 AP).
Looking only at pitches in the strike zone, his contact issues are also apparent. Hiura hovers at 71.7% of throws in the strike zone, slightly above the median of 69.3% of those with 100 AP.
But Hiura only makes contact on 68.1% of the pitches he swings on in the strike zone, with the league median at 86%. This is a big gap between Hiura and the rest of the league. His 68.1% is the lowest among hitters with 100 AP, meaning no one makes contact on less land in the zone than Keston Hiura.
15.9% of the pitches Hiura sees result in a called strike, putting him squarely in the middle of the pack.
It should be noted that this exercise only concerns locations, regardless of their type. He values a fastball (39.3% whiff rate) the same as a breaking pitch (47.2%).
So, looking at what all of this data means, it indicates that Hiura isn’t necessarily chasing bad locations, rather he’s having a hard time making contact when swinging on locations.
Hiura doesn’t swing on heights out of the area at a particular high clip, possibly indicating that he is able to recognize heights and follow them. He just isn’t able to put the bat on the ball consistently.
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Hiura’s future role in the team is unclear. It’s unclear if the Brewers have considered moving him at the MLB trade deadline or how they’ll handle Hiura next season. The DH is here to stay, and with Andrew McCutchen on an expiring contract, it may be possible for Hiura to slip into that role. However, he must first resolve the contact issues that have plagued him for the past two seasons.
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