One of the more intriguing collegiate prospects eligible for June’s MLB Amateur First-Year Player Draft ranks in the top-17 nationally in five important offensive categories – including No. 1 in on-base percentage – and was both a Perfect Game/Rawlings College Baseball 2017 Preseason and Midseason First Team All-American.
University of California Irvine’s Keston Hiura has twice been named to the Golden Spikes Award Preseason and Midseason Watch Lists, and for three years has been one of the Big West Conference’s – and the country’s – most consistent and prolific hitters.
He is projected to be a first-round pick by everyone responsible for providing those projections, and Perfect Game ranks him the No. 18 overall (college, juco, high school) prospect in the draft. The tool that has members of the national scouting community licking their chops is his ability to put the bat on the ball – simply put, the kid can flat-out hit.
“It’s the bat that has created the position that he’s in as it relates to what could happen in the draft,” veteran UC Irvine head coach Mike Gillespie told PG almost matter-of-factly during a telephone conversation earlier this week.
But what really makes the 5-foot-11, 190-pound, 20-year-old Hiura such an intriguing draft prospect is that he has not fielded a ball off the infield grass or caught a flyball in the outfield in live game action since April 2016.
That was when he felt some discomfort in this right (throwing) elbow after making a throw from centerfield, and learned later that he sprained his Ulnar Collateral Ligament (UCL), an injury that has limited his ability to throw the ball. It’s an issue that sent him into the role of designated hitter for the second half of the Anteaters’ 2016 season and has kept him at that position this season.
“it didn’t really bother me to hit, and that’s what ultimately led me to being the DH the rest of the season and into the summer,” Hiura explained during a separate telephone conversation this week.
He began to throw again at the end of October and was pleased as the day is long to find out everything was feeling just fine. And then, right at the end of the fall practice session in November, he re-sprained the elbow while making a throw, and he was back to being a full-time DH again.
“It was a little frustrating … but like I said, it never bothered me to hit and I knew that was my best (tool) as a baseball player,” Hiura said without a hint of resignation in his voice.
Doctors have told him that the injury will not require surgery and every MLB team’s front office is aware of that. He received a platelet rich plasma (PRP) injection in January to aid the healing process and has been told his prognosis for a complete recovery is excellent. Now, it’s just a matter of time before he can once again start a throwing program.
Hiura was an infielder in high school and moved to the outfield when he got to UC Irvine; most people, himself included, think he will play second base at the professional level. In the meantime, he has turned himself into one the best designated hitters in college baseball, and has done so simply by making the right adjustments whenever they were required.
“Last year when I began DH’ing, it was a lot tougher than I imagined; I give a lot of designated hitters credit for being very successful at what they do,” he said. “You’re only there to hit and you might have a bad at-bat … and then you have to sit two or three innings before you get another at-bat, so you can’t automatically go out on the field and forget about your (bad) at-bat.
“Over this past year, it’s something that I’ve kind of learned to deal with … and you have to forget and move onto the next at-bat and get them next time.” he continued. “From the summer onto now, I’ve adjusted to the role pretty comfortably, and now I’m just going out there to hit and have fun.”
This season has been a struggle for the Anteaters -- who fell to 17-29 overall after a 5-1, 14 inning non-conference loss to the University of San Diego Tuesday night -- but the way Hiura handles the bat has been a joy for their fans to watch. He also brings a bright and uplifting personality into a program that is searching for all the positives it can find this spring.
Gillespie noted enthusiastically “There’s nothing not to like about Keston” and pointed out that if a person were to sit down and start numbering-off all of Hiura's personal and character qualities, the list would most assuredly be a long one.
“He’s a bright guy, he’s an articulate guy, he’s mature, he’s got personality, he’s got a sense of humor,” the veteran head coach said. “Sometimes when guys have the gifts that he has you get some big-time arrogance and ego along with it, but not with this guy.
“He’s consistent,” Gillespie continued, talking again about his hit tool. “If they do get him out and if he has a bad day, he’s not throwing bats or sulking or none of that. He knows how to act and he always acts right; he’s well-liked, he’s very popular. There’s nobody that doesn’t like the guy.”
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MIKE GILLESPIE SPENT 20 SEASONS (1987-2006) AS THE HEAD COACH at the University of Southern California and won 770 games there while taking the Trojans to 15 NCAA Regionals, seven Super Regionals and four College World Series; they won the CWS and the NCAA D-I national championship in 1998.
After a one-year hiatus from college coaching, he became head coach at UC Irvine in 2008 and promptly took the Anteaters to a Super Regional in his first season there. Regional tournament berths followed in 2009-11 – the 2011 campaign ended in a Super Regional – and in his seventh season at Irvine (2014) he guided the ‘Eaters to their first CWS appearance since 2007. Gillespie was named the National Coach of the Year in 1998 while at USC and again in 2014 while at UCI.
He took over the UC Irvine program when Dave Serrano, who had been at Cal State Fullerton from 2000-04 returned to Fullerton in 2008 after three years at Irvine; he is now at the University of Tennessee.
“To be fair and to be real candid about it, when I came here we inherited good players,” Gillespie said. “Dave Serrano and his staff had been here for three years … and the cupboard was not bare when we got here. We inherited good players and they played well and we won a lot of games.”
Now in his 10th season at Irvine, Gillespie continues to recruit not only good players but guys that play hard, an approach he believes most of the other coaches in the Big West Conference take when it comes to recruiting.
In basketball parlance, these nine schools – UC Irvine, Long Beach State, Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly, Cal State Northridge, Hawaii, UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis and UC Riverside – are “mid-majors” and every school wants to build its program with good players that play hard.
“This is not the Pac-12 and it’s not the Big 12 and it’s not the SEC, so typically in this league all of the programs are dealing with players that the big shots passed-up on,” Gillespie said. “But we all know – and Keston is a perfect example – that there are lots of good players out there.”
There are a lot of good players on the Anteaters’ roster this year, although not all of them have been available due to injury. But the painful reality of this season is that the program isn’t going to reach 30 wins for the first time during Gillespie’s tenure and this will be his first UC Irvine team to finish below .500; the Eaters’ are 4-11 in league play, tied for last place with UC Riverside.
“There are too many programs, several, in fact, that have not had a down year like this,” Gillespie said. “I think, in our case, we have to look in the mirror and acknowledge and be accountable for the fact that we have failed in recruiting. I don’t think anybody is interested in any excuses or alibis and I don’t know that we have more injuries than the next guy, but we have had some significant injuries and we don’t have the depth to survive them.”
Hiura shares his head coach’s frustration while also facing the reality that he will never get a chance to step to the plate in an NCAA Regional, Super Regional for College World Series game.
“No one expected us to do what we’ve done this season; it’s kind of getting away from what UC Irvine baseball is known for,” he said. “But all of us are keeping our heads held high and trying to finish strong, and maybe cause a little bit of a ruckus in the Big West during the series we have left. We’re still giving it our best effort and trying to compete and win every game.”
Gillespie is good at identifying any positives that can be taken away from a game no matter the final score, and does so in an effort to help the team moving forward. There have been games this season when things have clicked for the ‘Eaters, and when that happens it’s important that they carry any momentum created by those successes into their next game.
The Anteaters have three-game Big West Conference series remaining at Hawaii (May 12, 14-15); at UC Riverside (May 19-21) and at home with UC Davis (May 25-27) – they host UCLA in a non-conference game on May 23 – so there is still time for them to cause that “ruckus” Hiura spoke of.
But facts are facts, and the facts in this case are that UC Irvine hasn’t pitched well all season and, except for Hiura, really hasn’t hit that well either. The Anteaters will arrive in Hawaii carrying a team batting average of .269 and a team ERA of 5.43, and have been outscored 278-235. The sting of this season is going to linger for a while.
“I really don’t offer up any excuse for this; it’s not OK and I’m very, very disappointed in it,” Gillespie said. “You just deal with it. You try not to whine and bitch and moan and you just keep working. … We’re like everybody else – there are a lot of us that aren’t going to be (an NCAA postseason team) – but you keep competing. You treat every game like it’s important because it is important. … I don’t think our players have quit in any way and we’ve been frustratingly close, but no cigar.”
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KESTON HIURA WENT UNDRAFTED COMING OUT OF VALENICA (CALIF.) HIGH SCHOOL in the spring of 2014, but he hadn’t gone unnoticed. He was named the Foothill League Player of the Year, the Santa Clara Valley Player of the Year and Valencia High’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year while also earning CIF Southern Section First Team recognition, all during his senior season.
He attended one Perfect Game event during his prep career – the 2013 PG Sunshine West Showcase in Chula Vista, Calif. – and was named to the elite Top Prospect List at that event.
Hiura was eager to commit to a college before the early signing period during his senior year in high school (2013-14), and he had early offers from UC Davis and San Diego. UC Irvine entered the picture toward the end of the process, and since the school had always been on his list of the places where he could see himself continuing his education and his baseball career, he jumped at the opportunity once it came on board.
Valencia is about an hour northwest of Los Angeles and Irvine about an hour southeast of L.A., traveling on Interstate 5.
“I came down and visited the campus, met all the coaches and got to see all the things that UC Irvine had to offer, and I fell in love with every aspect of it, from the program to the location,” he said. “Everything kind of fell into place and it felt really comfortable and like home to me.”
Gillespie was asked if he was pleased with the development of Hiura’s game since he arrived on campus, and the head coach laughed before admitting that there really wasn’t much development required. Hiura started hitting when he showed up for his first practice on the first day of his freshman year and hasn’t stopped hitting for almost three years now, the elbow issue be damned.
He started all 56 of the Anteaters’ games during the 2015 season and finished with a slash-line of .330/.392/.520 with 18 doubles, two triples, seven home runs, 52 RBI and 40 runs scored. He followed that up as a sophomore in 2016 by slashing .358/.436/.539 with 12 doubles, two triples, seven home runs, 41 RBI and 41 runs while starting all 53 of the ‘Eaters’ games.
“With the coaches and all the players, no one was pressing each other and everyone got along well, and that helped for the freshmen and the junior college transfers to get comfortable with the system and understand what it is to play Anteater baseball,” Hiura said. “Right from the beginning, everyone got along and that kind of helped ease the process of being the new guy and made it easier to try to help the team right away.”
Hiura was named to both the Preseason and Midseason Golden Spikes Award Watch List as a sophomore, and during one memorable stretch he reached base in nationwide-best 52 straight games, which included a 19-game hitting streak; he also had a 19-game hitting streak as a freshman. He was a PG Summer Collegiate First Team All-American in 2015 and last summer played – and excelled – with the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team as its designated hitter.
His batting numbers this season are even better than the previous two. Heading into this weekend’s games in Hawaii, Hiura boasted a slash-line of .405/.551/.684 with team-highs of 18 doubles, eight home runs, 34 RBI and 39 runs. His .551 on-base percentage ranks No. 1 nationally, his 44 walks rank No. 5, the .405 batting average comes in at No. 6 and his .684 slugging percentage ranks No. 17.
“There’s not a pitch he can’t hit,” Gillespie said. “He can get to the velocity – he’s gotten to the velocity – but he’s not a breaking ball out; he manages to be on-balance. He’s like anybody else where if you make great pitches to him or good pitches to him you can get him out, but he can also hit some good pitches and he will really punish the mistakes.
“I do think that where he has improved is with his patience -- he’s willing to take a base on balls because there’s lots of them,” the coach continued. “He doesn’t look significantly different and I don’t think his swing is significantly different or different at all, but he’s more selective and more patient.”
Hiura has been working with Los Angeles-area hitting instructor Sean Thompson since he was 9 years old, and learned early that his approach at the plate should follow the old “KISS” recipe: “Keep It Simple Stupid.” He sticks with the basics – get into a good stance, get a good pitch to hit and then put a good swing on it – and the results have been nothing short of remarkable.
“I know my swing the best, and everything starts by keeping it simple and slowing the game down, and being confident in your ability to succeed at the plate,” he said. ““I’ve always been able to hit the ball hard and once I got stronger I was getting under balls and letting them travel farther in the air.
“I’ve never viewed myself as a power hitter. It’s more just hit the ball hard and wherever it goes that’s where it will go; that’s kind of how I go about things.”
It appears the national scouting community considers Hiura to be a power hitter, a reasonable conclusion to reach when you look at his 75 extra-base hits – including 22 home runs – in 155 games wearing an Anteaters’ uniform. That general consensus was reflected in a PG Draft Pack report published on March 17:
“Comfortably projected by scouts to have both plus hit and power tools, Hiura is going to be an impact bat at the next level who can hit in the middle of the order and be productive. The concerns, however, have to do with where he’s going to end up profiling defensively at the next level … (but) Hiura may hit well enough for that conversation not to be a significant one several years down the road.”
No MLB club is backing off Hiura because of the elbow issue. He’s let them know that surgery will not be required and that he will come back 100 percent healthy at the right point in time, most likely as a second baseman.
“I’m confident in my ability to play the outfield positions, but ultimately I still view myself as an infielder. That’s where I want to succeed in the future,” he said. “Now it’s important to me to focus on this season and let my play and actions dictate what will happen in the draft. I don’t really think about where I’m going to go, who I’m going to go to or how much (of a signing bonus) I’m going to get, it’s more just playing the game I love and competing every day.”
And at the end of the day, Hiura feels like he’s in a pretty good place. He would have liked to have played on an NCAA Regional qualifying team, of course, but the game of baseball has never been known to offer many guarantees.
It seems certain he’ll be a first-round draft pick next month – PG’s first mock draft has him going to the Boston Red Sox with the No. 24 overall pick – something he could hardly have imagined when he graduated from Valencia High School back in 2014. Today, this hot-shot hitter can only look back at the last three years with a growing sense of appreciation.
“I’ve had a wonderful time here at UC Irvine; I’ve met a lot of great people and made a lot of great relationships between my teammates, friends and coaches,” Hiura said. “I’m very satisfied with what I’ve received here at Irvine and I still want to finish college – that’s a goal of mine if I get the opportunity to do that. I don’t regret my decision to come here to UC Irvine and I’m happy to be in the position that I’m in today.”