Brewers Can’t Ignore Keston Hiura’s Upside

Keston Hiura (photo by Tony Farlow)

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Keston Hiura’s bat was too much for the Brewers to ignore, even if an elbow injury prevented the UC Irvine second baseman from playing in the field in 2017.

Without knowing exactly how that injury might play out, the Brewers selected Hiura with the ninth overall pick in the draft, saying it was a calculated gamble with which they were comfortable.

“He is the best college hitter in the country,” said Wynn Pelzer, the Brewers’ area scout for Southern California who was the point man on Hiura.

The question was: Will Hiura’s elbow injury require Tommy John surgery that might delay his professional debut as long as a year? He was diagnosed with a partial tear of the UCL in his right elbow in 2016 and had a platelet-enriched plasma injection in January in an attempt to avoid surgery.

The Brewers said they examined the medicals on Hiura as much as a team can prior to the draft and were confident the arm issue wasn’t enough to pass on drafting him.

“We did a lot of work on that,” Brewers scouting director Tod Johnson said. “We’ve seen numerous images of his arm and elbow to validate what we’re getting there. Nothing is ever a certainty in a medical situation like this.

“We’ll work through that with our doctors, but we have a pretty high level of comfort that this won’t be a long-term issue for him, and that he’ll be back throwing and playing defensively for us.”

Hiura, a 5-foot-11, 190-pound righthanded batter, certainly wasn’t affected at the plate by his elbow issue. He was the top hitter in the college ranks with a .442 average, .567 on-base percentage and .693 slugging percentage. He had eight home runs and projects to continue to progress as a power hitter.

Pelzer said it was a challenge to scout a player who wasn’t able to play in the field all season but believed Hiura’s offensive upside was too high to ignore.

“It was a pleasure for me as a scout to watch this guy perform offensively,” Pelzer said.