What Are The Brewers To Do With Keston Hiura?

Option #3: Give Hiura a change of scenery

This is the option the Brewers likely do not want to take, but it may be the best one for both them and Hiura in the long run. I think Keston Hiura needs a change of scenery.

We’re going on three seasons since Hiura has been a productive bat at the big league level. He provides almost nothing defensively and his profile is driven entirely by his bat. The Brewers don’t have the ability to give him the leash necessary anymore to find it again. But some other team probably does.

There are a couple of reasons that making this move would be a tough pill to swallow. If they sell Hiura now, they’re selling low, at the absolute basement of his value. The return he would’ve garnered had they moved him in 2018 or 2019 or 2020, or even in 2021 is miles ahead what he’s worth now. Hiura would be little more than a throw in to a trade at this point.

The Brewers also invested a ton in Hiura, drafting him early, pushing him to the bigs quickly, making plans around him being a .300 hitter with 30 home runs in the middle of their lineup. The belief was so high. Giving up on him so quickly after getting just a taste of that potential in 2019 is so tough to do.

Plus, if he figures it out elsewhere, it’ll feel like the Brewers did all that work for nothing. They saw the talent, they knew it was there, but he just couldn’t figure it out. And then to see him figure it out for someone else? That hurts.

So for the Brewers to give Hiura a change of scenery would mean getting only pennies on the dollar on their investment, and then potentially seeing that investment pay off in a big way for someone else, who then look like geniuses and the Brewers look like fools.

I think the Brewers want to ensure that if Keston Hiura does figure it out at the big league level, it’s with the Milwaukee Brewers. They are going to want to be absolutely sure that he cannot get it done against MLB pitching before they move on from him. They will not look the fool here.

These are the options the organization has with Keston Hiura, and none of them are great. If Hiura was a 10th round pick or a 5th round pick or even a 2nd round pick, they’d just cut their losses and move on. But a Top 10 overall selection? Not so fast.

Obviously the best thing that could happen is Hiura finding his 2019 form and hitting the snot out of the ball again and proving he’s worthy of being an everyday player. That would be nice. We just haven’t seen it in three years and we may not see it again.