For starters, it’s looking like the Orioles should have traded Heston Kjerstad while he had prospect stock.
The 2020 MLB Draft was always going to be a weird one. Everything was weird in 2020 once the COVID pandemic entered our lives. For scouting amateur baseball, high school and college seasons were cut short, limiting opportunities to get current information about draft prospects. MLB chose to truncate the draft at five rounds instead of the usual 40. This was not an ideal situation for a team in the early stage of a major rebuilding project.
Still, the Orioles had the #2 pick in that class, along with a competitive balance pick after the first round. They would have their chances to add talent thanks to their terrible 54-108 record from the previous year.
Heston Kjerstad
The morning of day 1 of the 2020 Draft, everybody who does a mock draft and even some people who don’t were all united in thinking the Orioles would take Vanderbilt infielder Austin Martin. Mike Elias pulled off his first big draft surprise by going elsewhere in the SEC for Kjerstad, then an Arkansas outfielder. He ultimately signed an underslot bonus, which seems to have been one of the drivers of the pick.
We all know by now that Kjerstad went through quite an endeavor just to get to have any kind of professional career. He battled heart inflammation, then once he got past that, suffered a hamstring injury, and after finally looking like he was going to get a run in MLB, was hit in the head by the Yankees and had lingering concussion issues.
In 2025, with an opportunity opening up after Colton Cowser broke his thumb, Kjerstad flopped hard, batting .192/.240/.327 in 54 games before getting demoted back to Triple-A. Now he’s not even hitting for Norfolk either, dropping just a .455 OPS in 14 games back with the Tides. He might need a 2019 Cedric Mullins-esque drop to Double-A to truly reset him. Or maybe this is just it.
The choice of Kjerstad was a bit of a swerve at #2. Still, he was generally thought to be a talent in the 7-9 range of the draft class. He did not have the opportunity to have a normal development path. We’ll never know what might have happened otherwise. He is 26 now and it’s not a certainty that he’ll never be able to succeed in MLB, but he’s probably close to the end of his chances with the organization that stuck with him this far. Kjerstad is something of a reminder for contending teams and fans that some prospects are better being traded before you find out that they weren’t going to make it.
If it’s any consolation to an Orioles fan at this point, Martin, the guy who “everyone” thought they would take, is about as much of a flop as Kjerstad so far. He batted .253/.318/.352 in 93 games with the Twins last year, and hasn’t emerged out of the minors so far in 2025. (The Jays, who drafted Martin, cashed him out as a prospect in a trade for pitcher José Berríos.) Big-dollar college pitchers Max Meyer, Asa Lacy, and Emerson Hancock haven’t emerged as good big leaguers yet either and may never do so.
Jordan Westburg
A persistent rumor after the 2020 Draft was that the Orioles went underslot on Kjerstad with the idea of selecting a high school pitcher named Nick Bitsko with their second pick at #30. Bitsko was drafted at #24 by the Rays. Five years later, he’s been hurt a lot and hasn’t gotten above rookie ball in three years. This would have been a bust.
Without their supposed preference available, the Orioles went college again and took another SEC player, infielder Jordan Westburg. In a scouting report that placed him as the #37 prospect in this class, MLB Pipeline wrote of Westburg:
Westburg has a compact right-handed swing and possesses the bat speed and strength to provide 20 or more homers on an annual basis. He lacks consistency at the plate because he has a very aggressive, pull-happy approach and sometimes struggles with pitch recognition and managing the strike zone.
After a 2022 season in which the then-23-year-old Westburg hit very well at the Double-A and Triple-A levels, most publications had him in the 70s on their top 100 prospect lists ahead of the 2023 season. He eventually debuted that year, with a solid rookie season followed by an All-Star spot a year ago. Injuries have kept him off the field in 2025, but through 213 big league games in his career, he’s batting .259/.310/.460 while splitting between second and third base.
From Westburg’s spot to the end of the Draft, only two players have exceeded his career bWAR to date: Masyn Winn (second round) and Spencer Strider (fourth round). This was a good pick, and perhaps a lucky one in that the Orioles didn’t have the opportunity to try the high school pitcher they supposedly liked instead. It will look even better if Westburg can keep himself on the field more often. The lineup swooning in his absence last August and September does not feel like a complete coincidence.
Coby Mayo
The Orioles ended up splashing some of the available pool money in the fourth round on a relatively little-known infielder from the Florida high school ranks, Coby Mayo. As most players drafted out of high school don’t take the Jackson Holliday express lane to MLB, patience is called for with these guys.
In Mayo’s case, it took until 2023 when he was able to really break out, hitting 29 homers in 140 games between Double-A and Triple-A while in his age 21 season. That gets you noticed, and he was on the top 100 lists before the 2024 season. Ahead of this season, Mayo’s continued show of power had him in the top 30 on every list and the top 15 on many lists. One might argue that it was roster malpractice to not clear Mayo regular playing time for the Opening Day roster this year.
Mayo debuted last year and had a rough first taste of MLB, as a number of Orioles prospects lately have done. He hit just .098/.196/.098 over 17 games a year ago, and when given a cup of coffee in early May, had just one hit in 12 at-bats. I was concerned that the second demotion was going to be the beginning of the end.
However, the injury to Ryan Mountcastle opened up a path for Mayo to return, and he hasn’t looked as lost since returning. Mayo OPSed .681 in 18 June games. He has looked a lot more “hitterish”, as MASN’s Ben McDonald and others like to say, since returning. If he finds the power stroke at the MLB level, this pick will pay off in a big way. It’s not a foolish endeavor to hope for this outcome based on what we’ve seen so far.
Not much to say about these guys
- 2nd round – OF Hudson Haskin, Tulane
- 3rd round – SS Anthony Servideo, Mississippi
- 5th round – RHP Carter Baumler, Dowling (Iowa) HS
Baumler, now 23 years old, has been pitching in relief for High-A Aberdeen this season, with some decent results over 17.1 innings. I do wonder if the Orioles will consider promoting him to Double-A to see if they want to protect him from the coming offseason’s Rule 5 Draft. There are going to be bullpen openings next year and it’s better to work out enough internal options that people don’t need to formulate strong opinions about the likes of Scott Blewett.
**
Of the six players drafted in this class, only three have appeared in MLB up to this point. Those three players have combined for 2.4 bWAR, of which 4.6 belongs to Westburg, -1.0 belongs to Kjerstad, and -1.2 belongs to Mayo.
That’s not a great number up to this point, but there are a lot of teams who are much worse off than that and without any real hope of improving their 2020 draft class outlook. The Seattle Mariners, who had picks at 6, 43, and 64, have a combined -1.5 bWAR from their 2020 class so far. The Blue Jays, who picked Martin 5th overall before trading him to the Twins, made all of their picks from the college ranks and only Martin has appeared in MLB at all up to this point.
The two keys to long-term success for this class for the Orioles are Westburg being healthy enough to be about a three-win player per year, and Mayo developing into a quality power-hitting first baseman. I like their chances well enough. Or maybe I just need to believe, because the Orioles do need these guys to be good. Otherwise, what was the point of all of the losing if they couldn’t build an organization that could draft and develop its way to perennial (or maybe mostly perennial) success?
It’s too bad about Kjerstad, but at least the draft picks after him haven’t put him in “Billy Rowell drafted right before Tim Lincecum and Max Scherzer” or “Matt Hobgood drafted right before Zack Wheeler” territory. I should probably let those go. Maybe some day when the Orioles win the World Series.