vaff87 wrote:Interesting that Hiura has been so bad over the last two years. That guy was supposed to be a really good hitter.
He has had contact woes since reaching the bigs, but could mash fastballs. Once teams stopped throwing challenging him with plenty of fastballs early in counts (why is this still a thing with rookies? Everyone who makes it to the majors in 2021 can hit good fastballs), poor pitch recognition seems to have done him in, not dissimilar to Rowdy, really. And now he can't hit secondary stuff
or fastballs because his timing and confidence is shot. He has the third-worst swinging strike rate in the bigs from 2019-2021, and the second-worst swinging strike + called strike rate, while not having a crazy-high swing rate on pitches out of the zone...he's just completely at sea when trying to put swings on pitches around the zone, presumably because he can't pick up pitch type.
He's young enough that he could still figure it out, but it's not looking good.