Every Team's Most Interesting Player: Keston Hiura, Milwaukee Brewers

This is the 16th in a series of articles about the most interesting player for fantasy owners on each team heading into the 2020 season. We are going alphabetically, so today we’re going to talk about Keston Hiura of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Hiura is a hot commodity at this point in the draft prep season, going at No. 51 overall and seventh at 2B. At 23 years old, he certainly was impressive in his first MLB action, slashing .309/.368/.570 with 19 home runs and nine stolen bases across 348 plate appearances (84 games). The production mirrored his performance in the minors, most recently at Triple-A, where he hit .329 and smoked 19 homers with seven steals in just 57 games. A 2017 Top 10 overall pick, Hiura is ready to carry an everyday role for the Brewers, and is slotted in as their second baseman and cleanup hitter.

Still, two glaring statistics jump out. His .303 average was carried by a .402 BABIP, a number that’s unsustainable for long periods of time. The fact that he carried that BABIP over an 84-game stretch is remarkable. But peruse his minor league numbers, and you’ll see BABIPS of .386, .323 and .389. I can damn near guarantee he isn’t posting another .400+ BABIP in 2020, but is he destined to be a high-BABIP hitter?

He certainly hits the ball hard. He made hard contact at a 44.2% clip, and medium contact 38.9% of the time. His exit velocity was 91.4 mph, 22nd in MLB, and he ranked in the top eight percent of MLB in barrel % (13.9%)  per BaseballSavant. That’s the long way of saying Hiura smokes the ball when he makes contact, and that’s going to lend itself toward higher-than-average BABIPs most years.

The second number that gives pause is Hiura’s strikeout rate. He whiffed 30.7% of the time last season, and walked just 7.2% of his plate appearances. We’ve seen players – most recently Javier Baez – have sustained success with numbers like that, but it’s rare and it makes his OBP/OPS very dependent on maintaining that high BABIP. Hiura is a hitter who could see his average sink a great deal if he has poor batted ball luck; that doesn’t mean he isn’t worth the risk, but it’s something to weigh for a young player when ranking him against veterans who have had success already.

Hiura appears to be a rare player, someone with a wide range of outcomes, but also a high floor. Power is not going to be an issue for him, and at 2B that is valuable. His batting average may fluctuate based on his batted ball luck, and stolen bases can come and go, especially for middle-of-the-order bats. The ADP seems a bit high, but he can deliver that type of production. He’s simply not much of a value, because he will need to perform near the top of his upside to justify the price.