2020 1st round pick (2): Heston Kjerstad - OF - (Junior) (Arkansas)

[waroriole]

Someone mentioned that a Top 10 team planned to draft a guy who wouldn’t sign, in order to punt this year and get a second high pick next year 

[BohKnowsBmore]

6 minutes ago, wildbillhiccup said:

And you think this strategy makes more sense in year where they've condensed the number of rounds from 40 to 5? To me, if there ever was a year to swing for the fences with a top pick it is this year. 

Flip side is that perhaps there’s a better pool advantage vs. other years. Does anyone know the numbers? Guessing relevant metric is percentage of total pool?

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, weams said:

It's always been true. 

Since they have had a pool.

The O's went draft cheap a few years under Peter.

[ArtVanDelay]

2 minutes ago, Orioles1954 said:

Kjerstad has a slow power bat? Exactly how many games have you seen of him?

I think he meant slow runner and a power bat.

[wildcard]

32 minutes ago, spiritof66 said:

Yeah, we'll need someone to replace Chris Davis after a couple more years, and this apparently was the closest comp available.  

Can Kjerstad pitch a little, or play a bad third base?

Mountcastle 1B

[eddie83]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Puts on tin foil hat:

Ownership mandated they they sign a left handed power bat to replace Davis.

Takes off tin foil hat, neatly folds it and puts it away.

Is Peter back running things?

[Philip]

4 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Henderson hasn't grown into his power yet so he's an unknown. He very well may turn into a legitimate power hitter prospect, but for now, he's too raw to really say he's left-handed power in the system. Rutschman counts for sure despite being a switch-hitter. Santander is on the major league roster and doesn't really count as in the system but either way, while having pop, he doesn't have plus power.

This might be a dumb question, but what is the difference between pop and power? I thought they were the same.

[weams]

Data here

https://d1baseball.com/columns/drivelines-anatomy-of-a-prospect-arkansas-heston-kjerstad/

Quote

In addition, the average launch angle of his hard hit balls (defined here as his top 8th hardest hit balls, a sabermetric indicator strongly correlated to talent) sits just under 17 degrees, indicating that Kjerstad possesses a healthy uppercut swing found to be in line with some of the most productive batted ball combinations at the major league level (hard hit balls between 16 and 24 degrees produced a 0.883 wOBA in the MLB 2019 season). Kjerstad’s aggressive and contact-happy swing also comes with healthy attack angle estimates (11 degrees in 2019, 16 in 2020) and MLB -average bat speed estimated figures (his 72-73 mph bat speed would put him around the 50th percentile rank of the same set of MLB qualifying player seasons). His above-average bat speed and plus bat to ball skills have led to plenty of flush barrels over the course of Kjerstad’s career. His top 8th hard-hit ball exit velocity shook out to around 107.6 over the course of his whole career, a number that would have ranked in the 80th percentile for the 2321 qualified major league player seasons in the Statcast era (2015-2019) — albeit one that does come with an aluminum bat, which can pad exit velocity readings by 2-3 mph. The man can make hard contact, and lots of it —  he upped his already impressive 10.8 Barrel % per Batted Ball Event in 2019 to an eye-popping 17.9% in 2020 (would rank 5th  out of 250 MLB qualified hitters last season) an extremely strong indicator of success at the major league level.

Swing Decisions

As mentioned above, Kjerstad’s swing decisions have provoked some feedback across the industry and are often seen as the root cause of his higher than ideal K%’s throughout college; Dan Zielinski with the Baseball Prospect Journal puts it simply, stating that Kjerstad “is an aggressive hitter, which leads to strikeouts at times” and Kjerstad himself admits that he’s “still really focused on [his] plate discipline.”

Pairing his aggressive uppercut swing with an as-ambitious approach, Kjerstad swings at roughly 50% of the pitches he sees (a mark that would land in the ~74th percentile in MLB, min 100 plate appearances) and chases nearly one out of every three pitches that are thrown to him outside the zone. 

While a chase rate (or O-Swing% in the table above) of 33% may not stick out too much at the MLB level in 2019, where the average velocity faced is 4-5mph harder and the off-speed pitches are a bit more enticing, the number is quite high for college, particularly for a likely first round selection.

 

 

Looking at Kjerstad’s swing decisions a bit more closely, we see that he has a propensity to expand his zone in the north/south direction by a fair bit (the smaller circle in the above graphic represents where Kjerstad swings more than 75% of the time, while the larger circle represents where he swings more than 50% of the time, or essentially a coin flip choice).

 

[Enjoy Terror]

https://pressboxonline.com/2020/06/09/ben-mcdonald-on-why-arkansas-of-heston-kjerstad-is-possible-sleeper-pick-for-orioles/
 

Did this article get posted?

[TouchemAll]

My heart was set on Martin, but what do I know.  Bring your bat kid  Its good. 

 

 

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

Is Peter back running things?

I don't know man, I took the hat off.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, weams said:

Data here

https://d1baseball.com/columns/drivelines-anatomy-of-a-prospect-arkansas-heston-kjerstad/

 

That is something that seems like it would improve as he faces better pitching.

[Orioles1954]

5 minutes ago, ArtVanDelay said:

I think he meant slow runner and a power bat.

Got it. He's not a plodder.

[weams]

4 minutes ago, Enjoy Terror said:

https://pressboxonline.com/2020/06/09/ben-mcdonald-on-why-arkansas-of-heston-kjerstad-is-possible-sleeper-pick-for-orioles/
 

Did this article get posted?

Nope!

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Orioles1954 said:

Got it. He's not a plodder.

Will he be in five years?