Heston Kjerstad would probably look anywhere for a bit of hope right now. It turns out he doesn’t have to look far.

The struggling young slugger’s first full season in the majors, which represents the most extended run of playing time he’s had at this level since debuting in September 2023, has been a challenging one for both Kjerstad and an organization that has waited to see what the 2020 No. 2 overall draft pick could do.

A .190 average with a .545 OPS and just eight extra-base hits in 147 plate appearances was not what anyone expected. It’s also not unprecedented. Kjerstad has leaned recently on the advice of Ryan Mountcastle, whose own first full season in the majors started poorly, as evidence of how all is not lost.

“He’s taken me under his wing a little bit and talked to me about how his first full season went in the big leagues and how he didn’t have the start you’d want to have and how he had to just keep showing up, working through it, and there’s still a lot of baseball left,” Kjerstad said. “You’re one little, small adjustment away from being the kind of hitter you want to be in the box. Just keep having confidence, keep showing up every day with a positive attitude, keep working hard in the cage and doing everything you did.”

That took a while to pay off for Mountcastle in 2021. After a promising debut late in 2020, he started flat the following year and had a .577 OPS and just three home runs on May 20. Not long after, Mountcastle clicked into gear. He homered four times in five games as May turned to June, had his OPS up to .752 by the All-Star break and ended the year with 33 home runs and a .796 OPS. He had a .618 OPS in his first 44 games and an .872 OPS in his next 100.

Mountcastle was happy to share his experiences with Kjerstad.

“I was like, ‘Dude, I know it may seem like everything is just caving in, but you can get out of it.’” Mountcastle told him, paying back advice he’d received when he was going through it.

Trey Mancini had a full season in the majors on his resume when he dealt with his first extended slump in 2018. Mancini was off to a fine start when he banged his knee on an exposed portion of the wall down the left-field line on April 20. He played on, but he didn’t hit well for that entire first half.

He hit .194 with a .617 OPS in the next 71 games but reset at the All-Star break to rally for a .792 OPS in the second half, leaving him at .715 for the year.

“Trey was always such an awesome dude,” Mountcastle said. “I feel like me and him were sort of similar in a way, play types and stuff like that. So I could always relate to what he was saying. He had some talks with me, and he told me to keep going, the same things I was saying to Heston.”

Kjerstad seemed encouraged when he heard how Mountcastle ended that season, with a club rookie record for home runs (33). Mountcastle thinks that type of production is on tap for Kjerstad once things steady for him.

“I’ve seen him hit in game, seen him hit in BP,” Mountcastle said. “He’s a 30-home run guy. Once he gets going, it’s going to be fun to watch.”

That’s something Kjerstad feels is going to be a product of his timing. He feels he’s been in between a lot this year, meaning he’s rolling over pitches he’s early on or late on.

“I haven’t been consistent on either of those,” he said. “Now there are a lot of factors that can go into that, when I’m getting my leg kick off or what my approach is. It’s just dialing that in and, once I have my timing, that seems to be once I start really rolling.”

Those two relatively unusual aspects of Kjerstad’s offensive game — his leg kick and his approach — need to be working for him to be who he’s meant to be. He never particularly excelled at the swing-decision aspect of the Orioles’ development philosophies in the minors but made up for it with his ability to understand how he was being pitched and hit mistakes in certain areas of the plate.

Kjerstad’s 2024 season was a disjointed one due to inconsistent playing time and then a July concussion that cut short a productive spell. He had a 1.141 OPS in 14 games leading up to Clay Holmes hitting him in the head with a fastball, but his swing map was heavily concentrated last year around the top of the strike zone and above it — pitches Kjerstad can drive in the air.

This year, his swings aren’t concentrated anywhere. There are zones where he swings often all over the strike zone, and some areas at the bottom or below it where he’s swinging much more often. While none of Kjerstad’s overall rate stats in the plate discipline area is meaningfully different, the types of pitches he’s swinging at seem to be, and that’s influencing the quality of contact he’s making.

At this stage of his career, Kjerstad is the type of players whose power production will justify the approach rather than his approach yielding the power production. At present, the slug isn’t there — and there’s not a lot in his underlying or expected stats to suggest it’s due, save for maybe some bad luck on fastballs he’s been driving.

But, discouraging as the results may be, Kjerstad can only follow Mountcastle’s advice and try to power through it all.

“The main thing from him was keep having fun, enjoy every day, and good day or bad day, keep working on what you believe in and eventually it’ll show through and you’ll start hitting the ball like you want to,” Kjerstad said.