MILWAUKEE -- After a week off to clear his mind and 10 days of mashing at Triple-A Nashville, Keston Hiura is back in the big leagues.

The Brewers recalled Hiura before Monday’s opener at American Family Field against left-hander Blake Snell and a scorching-hot Padres team that has won nine games in a row to claim the best record in MLB. The club optioned right-hander Alec Bettinger back to Nashville to make room for Hiura, and it also reinstated utility man Jace Peterson from the injured list and designated him for assignment.

Hiura went 1-for-3 with a walk in the 5-3 victory over the Padres on Monday night.

“Obviously, that first month wasn’t an ideal situation for me,” Hiura said of his early-season slump. “It was more trying to clear my head, get things right. I knew things weren’t far off.”

With Hiura, the Brewers will have their team back together at home for the first time since their Opening Series against the Twins. Christian Yelich injured his back on the first road trip, and he was limited to one game over the subsequent five weeks before returning to the lineup last week and breaking through in Sunday’s 9-4 win over the Reds with two hits, including his first home run of 2021, two runs scored and two RBIs.

Yelich had a planned day off Monday but is expected back in the lineup on Tuesday. Lorenzo Cain, Kolten Wong and Omar Narváez are other offensive mainstays who have already missed time with injury before rejoining the active roster in recent weeks.

The Brewers moved Hiura to first base after signing Wong as a free agent in order to keep Hiura’s bat in the lineup, but he didn’t hit -- .152/.247/.266 with 32 strikeouts in 79 at-bats -- so the team demoted him to the Minors on May 3. Hiura first went to California to take a break from baseball and spend time with his mother, Janice, who is battling a form of lymphoma, then reported to Nashville and immediately started hitting.

Beginning with two doubles in each of his first two games for the Sounds, Hiura hit .438/.526/.906 with six doubles and three home runs in nine games, capped by a first-inning home run in Sunday’s 1-0 win in which No. 7 Brewers prospect Aaron Ashby pitched the first five innings of a one-hit shutout.

“He took the assignment and did as much as he could possibly do,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “The way you hope it went, that's how it went.”

Hiura said he was “fortunate and grateful” that the club gave him four to five days at home before reporting to Nashville.

“My mom has cancer right now and she’s going through her chemo treatments. It was good to see her and spend time with her,” he said. “I was actually able to spend Mother’s Day with her. When’s the last time a baseball player has spent Mother’s Day with their mom, given it’s in the season?

“It was good to see her and be in good spirits, moving around the house, cooking meals for me. You could tell it was just as important for her to see me as it was for me to see her.”

At the same time, Hiura went to work trying to shake the bad habits that had him fanning at fastballs in the middle of the strike zone during his opening month with the Brewers, and to rediscover the good habits that made him a slam-dunk first-round Draft pick in 2017 on the strength of his bat alone.

“Growing up, I’ve always gone on the field and just started swinging. If I ever slumped, I could swing my way out of it,” Hiura said. “This was one of the first times I realized I didn’t have any key points or foundations to go back on to remind myself what my focus is. When things do go bad, those are things you can go back to and get yourself back on track.”

During the time off and in Nashville, Hiura said he rediscovered some of those good feelings. Milwaukee is hoping the reset helps Hiura produce like he did as a rookie in 2019, when he had a .938 OPS in 84 games and hit 19 home runs, the most for a Brewers rookie not named Ryan Braun or Prince Fielder.

“No one wants to struggle, but that’s part of the game sometimes,” said Corbin Burnes, who went through the pitcher’s version of Hiura’s slump back in 2019 and came out the other side. “I know when he got sent down, he took a little time to kind of gather himself and spend some time with some family. … That more than anything can be a huge reset.”