Do you buy the optimism around Heston Kjerstad?

Every spring, baseball hands us a fresh stack of reasons to believe. The weather is warm, the innings are low-stakes, and everyone is in the best shape of their life. So when Heston Kjerstad steps into the box at Ed Smith Stadium and rockets a home run off a live-arm pitcher, the correct response is probably measured skepticism.

And yet.

Something feels different this February. Maybe it’s the swing. Maybe it’s the words coming from the manager’s mouth. Maybe it’s Jackson Holliday — not exactly a disinterested observer, but also not a guy prone to empty flattery — saying that when Kjerstad is healthy, he’s “seriously one of the better hitters that I’ve seen.” Whatever it is, the optimism around Kjerstad this spring has a texture to it that feels harder to dismiss than the usual “he looks focused in camp” boilerplate.

Let’s try to figure out whether any of it is real.

You probably know the story all too well. In 2020, the O’s made Kjerstad the second overall pick out of Arkansas, where he’d been one of the best pure hitters in college baseball. Within months of signing, he was diagnosed with myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — and missed essentially all of 2021. A hamstring strain pushed his professional debut further into 2022. When he finally showed up to play, he hit. He won the Arizona Fall League home run derby. He slashed .303/.376/.528 with 21 home runs across the minors in 2023. He hit .253/.351/.394 in 39 big-league games in 2024 before Clay Holmes drilled him in the helmet with a 97 mph fastball in July.

Then 2025 happened. He hit .192. He posted a .566 OPS. He got optioned to Norfolk in June, went on the IL with fatigue, and then disappeared from game action entirely in late July with what the organization vaguely described as an undisclosed medical issue. Mike Elias confirmed Kjerstad had been undergoing treatments for a medical condition but declined to say much more. The season was over.

That’s a lot of history for a 27-year-old who has still never played more than three games in a row at the major league level.

So what’s new? A clean bill of health, maybe. A new swing adjustment. Kjerstad has ditched the large leg kick — the signature piece of his always-unorthodox mechanics — in favor of a simpler toe tap as his front foot lands. It’s the same change Jackson Holliday made late in 2024, and Holliday’s offensive improvement in 2025 is well-documented. The theory is straightforward: less moving parts, more contact.

Manager Craig Albernaz, who is still finding his voice in his first full spring as a big-league manager, didn’t sound like a man offering polite encouragement when he talked about Kjerstad. He said Kjerstad is “physically in a great spot,” that he’s “moving so efficiently in the box,” and that the new mechanics would “allow that whippiness [good word] to work in the swing.”

And Kjerstad has already gone deep twice in live batting practice — a 410-foot left-on-left shot off Keegan Akin and another off righty Trey Gibson. He hit a line drive to left off Shane Baz. He had singles off Kyle Bradish. His exit velocities have always been elite when he’s healthy; the 46.5% hard-hit rate and 9.3% barrel rate from his 2024 major league stint were genuinely impressive numbers buried inside a limited sample.

Now, here’s the uncomfortable question: is Kjerstad still in the Orioles’ outfield plans? The team brought in Taylor Ward and Leody Taveras this offseason, and they still have Colton Cowser, Tyler O’Neill, and Dylan Beavers in the mix. That’s five outfielders with reasonable claims on roster spots before you even get to Kjerstad. Opening Day roster is almost certainly not happening for him. But a strong start at Triple-A Norfolk could make Kjerstad a roster contender — or a valuable trade piece.

He’d need to show some sustained success, but if Kjerstad is genuinely healthy and hitting, there are worse things a contending team could do than sign a left-handed bat with plus raw power, pre-arb through 2031, still only 27 years old.

Then again, the Orioles scenario isn’t hopeless either. O’Neill has his own lengthy injury history. Beavers hasn’t yet proven he can handle a full season. Ward and Taveras are one-year rentals. Cowser had a brutal 2025 and is entering the year with something to prove himself. The outfield picture in Baltimore is more volatile than it looks on paper, and one or two DL stints from the incumbents could open a door Kjerstad has spent five years waiting for.

There are two honest ways to view Heston Kjerstad in February 2026. The first is as a cautionary tale about what happens when you keep watching a talented player get mowed down by things outside his control, until eventually the career opportunity cost adds up and you can’t get it back. The second is as a player who has never actually gotten a real chance — never started three games in a row, never been healthy for a full season — and who might finally be about to find out what he can do.

The swing change is real. The spring results are real. Jackson Holliday working out with him all offseason in Stillwater is a good sign. The medical situation remains a mystery, but “full health” from the man himself and from the organization is the best available information we have.

Do I fully buy the optimism? Let’s say I’m cautiously in. We’ve been burned before, but the version of Heston Kjerstad that shows up healthy and locked in, with a more efficient swing and something to prove, is the kind of player worth paying attention to. If this spring turns into what it might be, we’ll be saying we saw it coming. And if it doesn’t — well, we’ve had plenty of practice at that too.

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