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Published Mar 16, 2020
Heston Kjerstad's huge 2020, incredible Arkansas career likely over
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Andrew Hutchinson  •  HawgBeat
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Heston Kjerstad will likely never play for the Razorbacks again.

Those 10 words should hit Arkansas fans harder than any home run the slugger from Amarillo, Texas, crushed during his two-plus seasons in Fayetteville.

The SEC has suspended play - and all athletics-related activities, including practice - through at least April 15 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Games could be played after that date, but with the College World Series already canceled by the NCAA and a limited timeframe, chances are slim.

“I think it will be really tough for student-athletes to be away for a month and come back and really get geared back up,” Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek said Friday. “What you have to really start to think about - from a student-athlete perspective, as an administrator - is it best to try to piece together a half of a season with no national championship, or is it best…to give each student-athlete a year back, and let them come back and have a full, competitive, championship experience?”

Even if spring athletes are granted an extra year of eligibility, Kjerstad is a surefire first-round pick in this summer’s MLB Draft. Despite still having a year of leverage, he - and players like Casey Martin and Casey Opitz - would have to turn down a seven-figure signing bonus to return to school for a second junior season.

What that means is we have seen the last of Kjerstad’s sweet swing in an Arkansas jersey. The next time we see it, he’ll be wearing a minor-league uniform - and it probably won’t be long until he reaches the big leagues.

All we can do now is appreciate Kjerstad’s 150 games as arguably the best hitter in school history, a span that includes two runs to the College World Series.

His numbers are incredible: a .343/.421/.590 slash line, 37 home runs and 129 RBIs. For perspective, if you extrapolate those over 162 games - the length of a full MLB season - he’d have 40 home runs and 139 RBIs, in addition to his .343 batting average.

The list of big leaguers who have hit those Triple Crown marks in a single season is exclusive, with only 10 players, and features the likes of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams.

Obviously the college game is different from professional baseball, but Kjerstad was still extremely productive when compared to his peers and his name will be sprinkled throughout the updated UA record book.

He is on the career top-10 lists for batting average (t-10th, .343), slugging percentage (7th, .590), home runs (7th, 37) and hit by pitches (t-6th, 33).

The most disappointing part of the coronavirus-shortened season is that Kjerstad was only about one-quarter of the way into what was shaping up to be a truly historic year. With a .448/.513/.791 slash line and six home runs, 20 RBIs and 19 runs, he might have made a run at one or more single-season school records.

However, those numbers were put up in 16 non-conference games. They likely would have dipped at least a little bit as the Razorbacks entered SEC play, which was previously scheduled to start last weekend at Mississippi State.

Even if his production experienced a similar drop as last year, though, HawgBeat estimated his final numbers for the season - assuming just six postseason games, a conservative guess - being .415/.486/.704 with 20 home runs and 62 RBIs.

Not only would those numbers make him a serious candidate to join Andrew Benintendi as the Razorbacks’ only Golden Spikes Award and Dick Howswer Trophy winner, but they’d also give him the fourth-best batting average in UA history - breaking Zack Cox’s single-season hits record along the way (105 to 102)

They would make Kjerstad just the seventh Arkansas player to reach 20 home runs, as well, tying him with Benintendi and Chad Spanberger for the most during the post-live bat era of the past decade.

What makes Kjerstad different than players like Benintendi, Cox and Spanberger, though, is that he’s been an All-American type performer since he set foot on campus.

Our projected statistics for his junior season would create a serious argument for Kjerstad as the best hitter in program history…

— He’d rank third with 51 career home runs, ranking behind only Danny Hamblin (57) and Ryan Lundquist (56) but shattering the record of 42 for a three-year player previously held by future big leaguers Jeff King, Andy Wilkins and Brett Eibner.

— Kjerstad’s 279 hits would also be the most among three-year players, breaking Matt Erickson’s mark of 260 and ranking fourth overall. He’d also be within striking distance of Lundquist’s record of 288 hits - which he could reach with another deep postseason run.

— His .357 batting average and .609 slugging percentage would rank fifth and sixth, respectively, while he’d also crack the top 10 for RBIs (8th, 171) and runs scored (t-9th, 178). Only two three-year players - big leaguers King and Eric Hinske - rank ahead of him in RBIs and he’s tied with those two guys in runs for second among three-year players, behind only Erickson.

It’s also worth noting that Kjerstad was riding a 17-game hitting streak when play was halted. That is more than halfway to Randy Bobb’s school-record 30 games set back in 1987 and it’s also the longest by an Arkansas player since 2010, when Cox and Monk Kreder had streaks of 24 and 20 games, respectively.

With respect to his 5-for-8 performance in the two-game midweek sweep of Grand Canyon last week, most fans’ final memory of Kjerstad in an Arkansas uniform will be his walk-off home run - the UA’s first since 2013 - to win a critical rubber match against South Alabama just four days before the season was put on hold.

The next time we see that, it’ll be in a professional park somewhere across the country instead of Baum-Walker Stadium.