Once a top draft pick and rising star, Heston Kjerstad’s 2025 season has turned into a major disappointment.

Once hailed as a future cornerstone of the Baltimore Orioles’ next great era, Heston Kjerstad is enduring a season that has gone completely off course.

The former No. 2 overall pick in the 2020 MLB Draft was expected to build on a promising appearance in the 2024 season that saw him slash .253/.351/.394 with four home runs and 14 RBIs.

But instead, 2025 has unraveled into something bordering on a worst-case scenario.

Through 54 games at the big-league level this season, Kjerstad is slashing a meager .192/.240/.327 with just four home runs, 19 RBIs, and a putrid -1.3 WAR. For a player with his pedigree — a first-rounder with a decorated college career, a smooth left-handed swing, and a .900+ OPS in the upper minors — it’s an alarming downturn.

Heston Kjerstad’s stock is hitting rock bottom during nightmare 2025 season

Baltimore had seen enough by mid-June. On June 10, the club demoted Kjerstad to Triple-A Norfolk, a corresponding move to make room for the returns of Cedric Mullins and Jordan Westburg.

The decision felt more like a mercy pull — a chance for Kjerstad to reset mentally and mechanically after a brutal 167-plate-appearance stretch in which he looked overmatched completely at the plate.

But the struggles appear to have followed him down. In his first nine games back with Norfolk, Kjerstad has gone just 5-for-33 (.152) with a lone home run. A minor knee issue has also popped up, further complicating his attempts to regain momentum.

The big question now is where do the Orioles go from here? Kjerstad is still just 26 years old, and development isn’t always linear.

There’s still time for him to make the necessary adjustments and reestablish himself as part of Baltimore’s long-term plans.

He’s not arbitration-eligible until 2028 and remains under team control through the 2030 season. But as it stands, any value he once held as a potential trade chip has been completely erased.

The Orioles don’t have much choice but to stay patient and keep working with him behind the scenes. Given how stocked their farm system remains, the pressure is only intensifying for Kjerstad to figure things out.

If not, the story of his time in Baltimore could shift from missed opportunity to one of the franchise’s most frustrating developmental failures in recent memory.

For now, Heston Kjerstad’s journey is on pause in Norfolk. Whether it resumes in Baltimore with any kind of meaningful impact is very much up in the air.