1st Round Pick SS Keston Hiura Had big outing in MLB Debut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cql0uGsDSLY

Under president of baseball operations David Stearns, the Milwaukee Brewers have not been hesitant to take calculated risks. But they have been truly calculated, from many sides, lowering those risks somewhat.

Such was the case when the Brewers took Keston Hiura with the ninth overall pick in the 2017 amateur draft. After suffering a partial tear in a ligament in his right elbow, the Cal-Irvine second baseman made the decision to serve only as a designated hitter during his junior season, keeping his bat in the lineup while seeking to avoid a worse injury.

The balky elbow certainly didn’t diminish Hiura’s ability to hit that season for the Anteaters. He batted .442, a school record that led all Division I players, as did his .567 on-base percentage.

That was enough for the Brewers. If some major-league teams backed off Hiura because of concerns over his elbow, they only became firmer in their belief that he was a first-round talent, excitingly calling his name at No. 9.

“When you make a selection like that, you bet on the person,” Stearns explained. “That, even if there is going to be adversity, he’s going to have the ability to get through it. We believed that with Keston. And we really believed in the hit tool. And that has played out just fine.”

Yes, it has. Hiura became the first position player from the ’17 draft to make it to the big leagues when the Brewers called him up Tuesday from Class AAA San Antonio to take the roster spot of third baseman Travis Shaw, who strained his right wrist the previous night in a game against Philadelphia.

Hiura, 22, was off to a strong start with the Missions, batting .333 in 37 games with 11 home runs, 26 runs batted in and 1.106 OPS. Less than two years out of the draft, he was deemed ready to play in the majors and immediately showed why, going 2 for 3 with a walk in his debut Tuesday night.

“He did get here fast,” Stearns acknowledged. “The vast majority of the credit for that goes to him.”

But plenty of credit goes to the Brewers’ amateur scouting department, which never wavered in taking Hiura despite the possibility he might need Tommy John reconstructive elbow surgery and miss his first professional season.

The Brewers weren’t 100% positive Hiura would still be on the board when their turn came. But everything began to fall in place when there was a run on high school players at the top of the draft. The Brewers then watched as two University of Virginia players, Pavin Smith and Adam Haseley, were taken by Arizona and Philadelphia, respectively, allowing Hiura to fall into their hands.

“He is the best college hitter in the country,” Brewers’ area scout Wynn Pelzer firmly said the night of the draft. Pelzer was the point man in scouting Hiura and knew the Brewers had added a special talent to their system.

Before his junior season, Hiura made the decision to have a PRP injection in his elbow, a platelet-enriched plasma treatment commonly used to try to avoid Tommy John surgery. Because of restrictions to medical records before the draft, however, the Brewers would not know for certain if the ligament had healed until performing their own magnetic resonance imaging exam.

As it turned out, the injection worked and the ulnar collateral ligament basically was healed. The Brewers wisely opted to put Hiura on a cautious program that summer, serving in a designated hitter role until deemed ready to play in the field.

“Anytime you draft and develop a player, and get him to the big leagues, it’s rewarding,” Stearns said. “It means there’s a wide swath of the organization that has impacted the player.

“In this case, I give a tremendous amount of credit to everyone associated with our amateur draft process. And, equally important, all the coaches and development personnel that touched him along the way. We always believed in his bat.

“We knew there had been a fairly significant injury to Keston’s elbow. Our medical staff did a really good job managing this process throughout. That’s one of the main reasons he was able to get here so quickly.”

Beyond the potential elbow issue, the Brewers also knew Hiura had an unusual approach to hitting. He used both a toe tap and front leg lift in his approach in the batter’s box, a rare combination. Some hitters use a toe tap, some go with the leg lift, but few feel comfortable doing both, from a timing standpoint.

It was what worked for Hiura, however, and the Brewers saw no reason to change him. He was an advanced hitter who drove the ball with authority to all fields, exactly the kind of offensive talent that teams seek.

“I really started doing that as a senior in high school,” Hiura said. “Then, in college, the leg kick got a little higher. It’s more rhythm. It may look a little unorthodox, but it feels good to me at the plate, I promise.

“Luckily, no one (tried to change it). At Cal-Irvine, they let me do my thing and it worked out. I’d get pointers when I was struggling. But, for the most part, nobody has tried to change it. So, I’m happy with it.”

Stearns recalled the discussions about Hiura’s unique batting style during meetings with the team’s scouting department before the draft. When all was said and done, the thinking was if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.

“There was a recognition that Keston does things a little bit differently,” Stearns said. “But there was a steady acknowledgment that what he was doing would work. Not only was it working at the collegiate level but that it would work at the professional level, and that he was going to hit.

“There was no question from our evaluators that his hitting tool was real.”

Real enough to take the fast track to the major leagues.