DataBaseball
2026
Heston Kjerstad headshot

Players · K · RF · 2026 regular season

Heston Kjerstad

Age
27
B/T
L/R
Height
6' 2"
Weight
215 lb
Number
#13
Born
February 12, 1999 in Amarillo, TX, United States
MLB debut
September 14, 2023
Drafted
2017, round 36
College
Arkansas
High school
Canyon Randall

Compare with…vs Orlando Arciavs Kevin Newmanvs Henry Davis

dbWAR
-.5
Regular season, 4 season(s)
PA
19
AVG
.211
OBP
.211
SLG
.263
wRC+
23
100 = avg

Heston Kjerstad is a right fielder for the Baltimore Orioles. In 2026 he hit 0 home runs and knocked in 2 RBIs, notching 4 hits across 19 plate appearances in 11 games. His batting average was .211, 13.7% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .211 clip and slugged .263, for an OPS of .474, 34.1% lower than the league mark of .719. He averaged 82.5 mph off the bat, hit 20.0% of balls in play at 95 mph or better and made contact on 56.8% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 23 wRC+ puts his offence 77% below average. That comes to -0.1 dbWAR — -1.7 runs with the bat, +0.0 for the ballpark, -0.0 on the bases, +0.2 on double plays, -0.2 for the position he plays, against replacement level. It includes no fielding: defensive runs are proprietary and are not estimated here, so the figure credits playing a demanding position but not playing it well.

League context

Percentile among qualified batters, 2026 regular season.

wRC+23
wOBA.207
ISO.053
BB%0.0%
WAR-.1

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to -1.1 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

Batting-1.7Ballpark+0.0Baserunning-0.0Double plays+0.2Position-0.2Replacement+0.6
BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

0.4-0.2-0.823242526

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below.

Trend
2026BAL1119402009.211.211.263.053.4000.0%47.4%.207-1.723-0.1
2025BAL52167304191645.192.240.327.135.2413.6%26.9%.248-9.352-0.8
2024BAL391142541411033.253.351.394.141.3398.8%28.9%.329+1.61140.4
2023BAL13337230210.233.281.467.233.2786.1%30.3%.318-0.11020.0

Separate from the regular season

Postseason Postseason

Wild Card through World Series. These games are counted on their own: none of them are in the regular-season tables, career totals, league context, leaderboards or dbWAR on this page.

Postseason batting

Postseason Heston Kjerstad's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
SeasonTeamRoundGPAABRH2B3BHRRBIBBSOSBAVGOBPSLGOPS
2024 PostBALWild Card222000000010.000.000.000.000

Box-score and rate statistics only. wOBA, wRC+, FIP and dbWAR are measured against a full league season, and a postseason is a few teams playing each other for a month, so they are not computed for October.

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2026. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs RHP19194009.211.211.263.20747.4%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 10 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 10 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
0.0%
0 barrels
Exit velocity
82.5
mph average
Max exit velo
97.2
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
20.0%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
40.0%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
13.0°
average
Barrel rate0.0%
Exit velocity82.5 mph
Hard hit rate20.0%
Contact rate56.8%

A barrel is a batted ball whose exit velocity and launch angle have historically produced at least a .500 average and 1.500 slugging — 98 mph within 26–30°, widening to 8–50° by 116 mph. Reconstructed from Statcast's published anchor points, which reproduces them exactly; the interior is within a degree. Sweet spot (8–32°) is an exact definition.

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2026.

—————3 AB——1 AB—1 AB—2 AB——1 AB—1 AB—3 AB
Below averageLeague averageAbove average
Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .243.

Situational hitting

How Heston Kjerstad hits by base state, outs, score and late-game pressure — each read against his own season line.

Split by
By who is on base when he comes up. The season line is repeated as the baseline.
SituationPAABHHRRBIBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBA
All situations19——————.211.211.263.207
Bases empty · thin101020004.200.200.200.179
Runner on first · thin3300001.000.000.000.000
Runners on · thin9920205.222.222.333.239
RISP · thin6620204.333.333.500.358

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Rows under 25 plate appearances are marked thin — at that size a rate moves several dozen points on one hit. Counted from play-by-play, 2026.

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Heston Kjerstad
How these are computed

wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.