The first time Ken Guthrie met Heston Kjerstad, a lot was different. Kjerstad, this year’s No. 2 overall Draft pick, who signed with the Orioles on Tuesday, was 11 years old. Guthrie, the O’s North Texas area scout, was coaching Kjerstad’s older brother Dexter on a summer ball team from the Dallas-Fort Worth area that also included a young Dylan Bundy. At that time, the player who’d become the prize of Guthrie’s scouting career was just a spectator.

“My focus was on the field at the time,” Guthrie remembered. “And I would see Heston running around in the stands and his parents trying to keep track of him.”

“I was just a little kid back then,” Kjerstad recalled.

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Fast forward a few years, and Guthrie was scouting for the Orioles when the younger Kjerstad began to garner attention as a talented high school junior. Kjerstad was a switch-hitter, having yet to commit to batting left-handed full-time. He was also smaller. Not preteen small, but far from the 6-foot-3, 220-pound slugger who’d grow to dominate the Southeastern Conference.

“I wasn’t the player in high school I am now,” Kjerstad said. “I’ve changed a lot since I first met him.”

But Kjerstad was talented enough to earn a scholarship to the University of Arkansas and to be a 36th-round selection by the Mariners in the 2017 Draft. He had jumped on Guthrie’s radar, too, thanks to a strong showing in the Connie Mack World Series, an elite amateur showcase held annually in Farmington, N.M. The Orioles were interested in and curious of the player Kjerstad would become in Fayetteville.

“That was the first time I really considered Heston was a MLB prospect,” Guthrie said. “When I was in the clubhouse prior to his freshman spring season, I was sitting down with [then-Razorbacks pitching coach Wes Johnson], who is now the pitching coach of [the] Minnesota [Twins], and Heston walked in. He looked like a completely different person. I knew then and there I probably underestimated what his power tool was going to be. He proved my notion right.”

Kjerstad had ditched switch-hitting in the year or so prior, shelving his natural right-handed swing for his more powerful left-handed stroke. And he’d grown. Guthrie kept in touch, checking in with Kjerstad and his family whenever he passed through Fayetteville. He kept checking in, and Kjerstad kept growing, putting up power numbers to match the spurt.

Kjerstad hit 14 homers his first spring on campus, setting Arkansas’ single-season freshman record. He then went deep 14 times as a sophomore, helping the Razorbacks to consecutive College World Series appearances, and six times in 16 games this spring while halving his strikeout rate in a small sample.

By the time the Orioles made Kjerstad the second overall selection in this June’s Draft, what they saw was what executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias called Wednesday “a rare combination of power and the ability to hit for average, and what we feel is a swing and [an] approach that will convert that production to the professional game.” It comes courtesy of unique swing mechanics Kjerstad described as having “naturally developed.”

“It was like playing the guitar,” Kjerstad said. “It’s my form of art and I have my own unique rhythm with it.”

On Draft night, the O's were still talking about one of the homers Kjerstad's unique swing produced -- the 430-foot shot he sent out of center field at Houston’s Minute Maid Park during this spring’s Shriners Classic, one of the collegiate schedule’s premier annual tournaments. Elias called Kjerstad “the best left-handed hitter in the country” upon drafting him second overall, bypassing several more highly ranked prospects to do so. He agreed to a significantly under-slot $5.2 million bonus on Tuesday, making official what was a massively important decision for an organization pinning its rebuilding efforts on savvy drafting and player development.

For Guthrie, it was a culmination of an almost decade-long relationship between player and scout.

“Sometimes as scouts we do the best we can to project,” Guthrie said. “But players do get better and certainly Heston showed the advancements that he made simply physically.”

The question now for the Orioles is: How can they put Kjerstad in the best position to get even better? Elias was noncommittal on Tuesday when asked if Kjerstad would be included in the club’s 60-player pool later this summer, though he indicated earlier in the week that some 2020 draftees were likely to eventually be added. The O's have only committed 44 players to their pool thusfar, none of whom are prospects. They are expected to open a satellite camp at one of their Minor League affiliates in the coming weeks, using it to balance MLB roster depth needs and the development needs of their top prospects.

There is no Minor League season this year, so the Orioles must decide if they prefer to have Kjerstad work out in a controlled environment or if they are comfortable with him training remotely from his home in North Texas, and participating in the array of virtual initiatives their player development and strength and conditioning departments are making available over Zoom.

Elias called it a conundrum that “applies to every Minor League baseball player in the world right now.”

“It’s definitely tough not being able to go out and play games, because me, personally, I think that’s the best way to improve as a player is to be playing every day and facing high-level competition,” Kjerstad said. “Every Minor Leaguer is struggling with the same thing. Nobody is going to face competition, so you need to be a little creative in your training. And also making sure maybe you’re getting live at-bats wherever you’re at with a group of guys or doing a lot of machine work to simulate real at-bats and things like that. Just stay prepared.

“You’ve always got to keep improving.”