Brewers’ Hiura ready for close-up
Young hitting star also shows acting chops in team’s latest movie spoof
In his first 84 major-league games with the Milwaukee Brewers last season, Keston Hiura lived up to his billing as a hitting prodigy.
This spring, he stepped outside his comfort zone and took up acting for the first time.
Hiura played the role of Marty McFly opposite Brent Suter’s Dr. Emmett Brown in the team’s social-media remake of “Back To The Future” and, by most accounts, knocked it out of the park with his performance.
“I thought Keston, in his first starring role in one of these things, was really good,” said manager Craig Counsell, who
shared one of the bit's funniest moments with Hiura while playing George McFly in the initial diner scene.
It certainly wasn't anything that Hiura had on his radar screen heading into spring training.
"Other than small parts or whatever that the Brewers had me do (previously on social media), that was the main bigscreen moment I've had," Hiura said Tuesday. "Me watching myself, I just feel like I'm awkward and weird. But a lot of people have come up and said, ‘You know, you did really good.' "
Hiura turns 24 on Aug. 2, so the movie had been out for over a decade by the time he was even born.
Still, the second baseman had seen it "plenty of times" before stepping into the co-star's role opposite Suter, easily the Brewers' biggest ham and a veteran of some of the team's other socialmedia spoofs – most notably "Dumb & Dumber" in 2018.
Hiura shared only a few seconds of screen time with Counsell in the pair's scene together, shot early on in camp in Arizona. He said they boned up on it by watching the original a few times prior to shooting it and wasn't sure what the reaction was going to be afterward.
"I was trying my hardest to get it done, and Couns obviously killed it," said Hiura. "It was definitely weird at first because I've never done any kind of acting stuff, and you don't know how it looked.
"I was kind of nervous that I was going to let people down, but so far I've gotten a lot of good feedback from it. It was definitely pretty spot-on, and hopefully we have more re-enactments of other films or clips later down the road."
Indeed, the focus for everyone – finally – has returned to the field after baseball's three-month pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hiura arrived in Milwaukee last week on the heels of a strong performance in the Cactus League before play was halted, having hit .360 with three home runs and five runs batted in while posting an OPS of 1.185 over 10 games.
It was just the type of springboard he'd been hoping for as he entered what would have been his first full season at the game's top level. Now because of the pandemic, he'll have to wait until at least 2021 for that – and maybe longer.
"Right when spring training got cancelled, it started to go really good," Hiura said. "I was in a place where I was excited to get the season started. I was like, ‘The season can start now.' The body was feeling good, swing was feeling good, arm was feeling good. Everything on that checklist was kind of checked off and all that was left was season.
"I know that was the case for a lot of players as well – not only on our team but just in general, in the league. So, I mean, it's different. No one has ever done this before, where you kind of ramp things up and then you shut down and then not know when things are going to start back up."
Hiura put up terrific numbers last spring as well but, because he needed more seasoning, opened the season at Class AAA San Antonio.
An injury opened the door for Hiura's major-league debut last May 14 in Philadelphia – he singled in his first at-bat and twice overall – and he returned to the majors for good by late June.
Hiura ultimately lived up to his billing as a middle-of-the-order hitter.
He finished at .303/19/49/.938 – numbers that might have been even better had he not injured his left hamstring Aug. 31, and more than impressive enough to overlook some major hiccups at second base (16 errors in 81 games, minus-5 defensive runs saved).
Hiura also hit in 15 straight games from July 7-27, tying him for the secondlongest streak in franchise history by a rookie, and provided one of the season's signature moments when he lined a two-run, 10th-inning, walk-off homer to right field off Craig Kimbrel to beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-3, at Miller Park in late July.
“I don't think there's any doubt," hitting coach Andy Haines said when asked if Hiura, chosen ninth overall by the Brewers out of Cal-Irvine in 2017, has just scratched the surface of his vast potential as a hitter.
"Some things I was paying close attention to was how does he get to his success? Is there just one way that he has to get to his success? But there wasn't. I think that's what was so impressive. You saw him off Kimbrel – that was a pretty good breaking ball down and away, the other way.
"I remember (Felipe Vázquez), the lefty for the Pirates. It's 99-100, and he pulls it. Some teams will think they can go to some places to get him out, and he'll make an adjustment. So when you watch a guy that's talented, he has aptitude, he cares about the right things every day, it's only about preparing and being great, you feel really good about Keston.
"Man, this guy's got a chance to be a really good player for a long time. And he also is not taking anything for granted."
Repeating that first-year success will be a challenge for Hiura, which Haines acknowledged. But the traits that helped Hiura get to this point are the same ones he believes will eventually lead to him being listed among the elite hitters in the National League.
"I would say for a prospect who has his hype, it's hard for him to be as good as advertised in the big leagues. It's so difficult," Haines said. "You usually have these questions or (are) let down. For him, it was the opposite.
"I was actually the other way, like we probably haven't talked about this guy enough, to watch how well he's playing and what he's capable of.”
Hiura has proven to be affable but low-key during his short time with the Brewers, preferring to let his bat do his talking for him on the field rather than recounting his accomplishments.
That's not likely to change moving forward. But how about another crack at acting at some point?
"We'll see," he said with a wry grin. "I think I'll stick to baseball first, but then later down the road, if the opportunity presents itself, I might take a stab at it.”