One Last Thing and then I Swear to God I’ll Shut Up about this Forever: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the War on Keston Hiura: Arguments, Opinions, Reflections, Recollections, the Platoon.
In 2021, the 95-win Brewers faced left-handed starters 39 times and wound up with a 20-19 record in those games. Not great, not bad, just average. However, after losing the three players with the best on-base plus slugging percentages against left-handed pitchers in the offseason (Garcia, Pina, and Escobar), they were running the risk of becoming a truly bad team versus lefties.
Enter Hunter Renfroe
Renfroe has been everything the Brewers could have possibly hoped for when it comes to hitting lefties, posting a slashline of .325/.356/.750. His 1.106 OPS vs. lefties is 10th best in the majors (min. 25 PAs). That puts him just behind Mike Trout and Byron Buxton and just ahead of Nolan Arenado and Luis Robert, which is pretty good company to keep.
While he’s done a great job filling the Brewers’ need for a guy who hits lefties, he’s been about league average against right-handed pitchers. He has a slashline of .245/.284/.412 against righties so far this year. That gives him an OPS of .696, which is just below the National League average of .699 OPS vs. RHP. So not great, but not bad, just average.
The problem there is that so far this year only about 28% of the Brewers plate appearances have been against left-handed pitchers. While that’s great for most of the other Brewers who hit righties better, it means Renfroe is just an average hitter roughly 72% of the time.
While Craig Counsell’s affinity for versatility in his players allows him to set lineups best suited to take on any type of pitcher the opponents throw at him, he has for some reason turned a blind eye to what could very well be one of the best platoons in the league. How can he take Renfroe’s 1.106 OPS vs lefties and get that type of production the other 72% of the time?
Enter Keston Hiura
Keston Hiura’s slashline versus right-handed pitchers is almost identical to Renfroe’s slashline versus left-handed pitchers. In 27 plate appearances, he’s slashing .304/.407/.696 against righties. It is still a pretty small sample size due to him spending time in the minors and Counsell banging his head on a wall trying to create a usable platoon with Rowdy Tellez and Keston Hiura at first base.But it’s pretty remarkable that his OPS vs. righties (1.103) is so similar to Renfroe’s vs. lefties (1.106).
While Renfroe’s 1.106 OPS vs. lefties puts him as 10th in the league in that category, Hiura’s 1.103 OPS vs. righties is good for fourth best in the league in that category. If those splits held up for the rest of the year and Counsell did decide to run a straight platoon with those two in right field, then the combined final slashline from that position would be .317/.375/.730 with an OPS of 1.105. For context, Yelich’s slashline in his MVP season was .326/.402/.598 with an OPS of 1.000.
Platoon Problem
Now to this point, I have chosen to ignore a few obvious problems with that platoon. First and foremost, Keston Hiura has never played right field. His poor throwing arm would also be an absolute liability there.
There are a few solutions to that problem. First one being I don’t care. Players get moved to the outfield all the time, i.e. Ryan Braun. When you have a guy who is hitting the way Hiura is, you take the hit defensively. The Brewers pitching staff leads the majors in strikeouts. Their starting rotation’s 10.52 K/9 is almost an entire strikeout up on the next best, that being 9.68 by the White Sox. If any pitching staff had the ability to hid a defensive liability, it’s the Brewers.
Hide in plain sight
If you want to get even more specific, they could just toss him out there on days Corbin Burnes is pitching against another right handed pitcher. Corbin Burnes’ 1.63 FIP (fielding independent pitching) last season is second only to Pedro Martinez’s 1.39 in 1999 since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. While Burnes’ 3.41 FIP is a little more pedestrian this year, it’s still good for 14th in the National League. Even then, that’ll most likely drop throughout the year and his 2.05 FIP since the start of 2020 is a mile ahead of the second best, which is 2020 Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber’s 2.73 (min. 200 IP).
So not only do the Brewers have the best staff to hide Hiura in the outfield, they have the best pitcher to hide him. In fact, Burnes has already logged a game this season in which no outs were made by an outfielder.
On top of that, Burnes needs the offensive boost. Since he’s regularly lined up against the opponent’s ace, he’s seeing the same lack of run support Brandon Woodruff saw in the same position last season.
The second glaring issue with the platoon is trust. Does anybody, besides me, actually believe Keston Hiura is back to his old self? His success versus righties this year is a pretty small sample size and he has struggled mightily since his stellar rookie season in 2019.
Trust Issues
Admittedly, I am consistently dangerously optimistic. But there are a few reasons to believe the prodigal bat has returned. First, he raked all of spring. Second, he raked when he got sent down to AAA earlier this month. Third, his splits this year resemble his splits from his great rookie season.
In 12 spring training games this year he hit four home runs and slashed .393/.485/.929 for an OPS of 1.414. In five AAA games this year he hit three home runs and slashed .421/.522/.895 for an OPS of 1.417. Even though the competition level may be lacking in spring training and AAA, seven home runs in 17 games is impressive.
Return to the Norm
Then when you compare his splits this year to the splits from his rookie season you’ll see they’re a little more extreme this year but overall fall in line with 2019. His OPS that year was 1.021 against RHP and .673 against LHP. In the small sample size he’s put together this year he has that staggering 1.103 OPS vs RHP along with his putrid .432 OPS vs LHP. That’s even after it went up since he managed to reach base twice against a lefty in his last start. So even when he was a success in 2019, he basically hit it exactly how he’s hitting now. Except this year he’s had limited at bats against righties so his overall numbers still make it look like he’s struggling.
At this point in his career, we can see who he is and with that information we can see he is being set up to fail. Not that I can blame Counsell for trying so hard to get some sort of breakthrough with Hiura hitting lefties, since it is still just May and all. But if you see Hiura’s overall slashline of .244/.333/.444 this year and think he still doesn’t have it, it’s because you’re missing the context of how things are being stacked against him.
There has to be a better way!
Third problem with the platoon is do you really want Hunter Renfroe out of the lineup against right-handed pitchers? After all, you can do a lot worse than league average. Plus he does have four home runs against righties this year, and he has an absolute cannon for an arm which has already led to five outfield assists this year. For context, Christian Yelich led the team in outfield assists last year. He had five.
The solution to that problem? Three way platoon. So which position should be thrown into the platoon? Hiura’s natural defensive position. No, not second base. Designated hitter. Andrew McCutchen has been the go-to designated hitter so far this year, and he hasn’t been bad. But when you compare his splits to Hiura’s, there’s a case to make for Hiura to cut into his at bats.
Nevermind that he has a below average OPS of .616 against righties this season, he has actually been a pretty average hitter against righties for a while. He’s hit 42 home runs against RHPs in the last five seasons, which tied for 127th over that timeframe. His slashline against righties in that time frame is .228/.333/.391 for an OPS of .725. The league average over that timespan is .246/.318/.416 for an OPS of .734, and those numbers include pitchers’ plate appearances.
In the last five seasons, the only time McCutchen even approached Hiura’s career OPS of .845 vs righties was in the grand juiced ball year of 2019, where he slashed .244/.362/.470 for an OPS of .832 against righties. That was the last season he posted an OPS above .683 against right-handed pitchers.
Ideal Platoon
So numbers-wise with the three-man RF/DH platoon, ideally it would be Renfroe in right with Hiura DHing against righties. Then it’d be Renfroe in right with McCutchen DHing against lefties. That looks like it’s just a DH platoon, but I would want it to be 60/40 Renfroe to McCutchen in right field. Renfroe’s splits compared to McCutchen’s splits over the last five years is basically a pick your poison type situation. McCutchen has a huge advantage in on-base percentage, .333 to Renfroe’s .279. Meanwhile Renfroe has the superior slugging percentage, .467 to McCutchen’s .391. So it’d basically be up to Craig and what he wants that day, on-base skills or hard hit balls. Either way, neither guy should probably run away with the timeshare so they can get enough at-bats to stay lock-in.
With that platoon, Counsell could still play Hiura at first against lefties and hope he has that breakthrough. But with the numbers we have right now, Rowdy has proven to be an every day player. While his numbers against lefties aren’t great this season, they are significantly better than Hiura’s. Also, Rowdy actually produced a higher OPS against left-handed pitchers than he did right-handed pitchers last season. He had a OPS of .730 against lefties to .716 against righties, so he does have a history of hitting lefties.
More reasons to play Hiura
Another reason for this desperate plea to get Hiura more playing time is his clutch stats. In his career he has some pretty impressive numbers when the pressure is on. His career slashline with runners in scoring position and two outs is .232/.364/.561/.925. In innings 7-9 he’s produced a slashline of .280/.363/.528/.891 in his career. On top of that, he’s been even better in extra innings with a career slashline of .462/.429/.1.154/.1.582. So basically if the game goes into extras, you’d rather face Babe Ruth than Keston Hiura,
With all that said, it’s May. It’s information gathering time. You shouldn’t get too upset with any lineup Counsell throws out there. But if the numbers we have now hold up throughout the year and Hiura never gets a regular spot in the starting lineup against righties, it will be me banging my head against a wall.
Stats compiled via Baseball Reference prior to Monday’s game.
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