I really doubt he starts at Bowie given his lack of playing time, even if he gets some AFL ABs. The team seems to be pretty conservative with where guys start, but is willing to be aggressive with moving them quickly if warranted. Westburg and Stowers both seemed to start a level too low, but that's probably ok if they're going to have them at 3 levels in one year. Now 2021 may be different than any other year given the lack of 2020 minors, but Kjerstad is kinda in the same boat again to start 2022. I wouldn't be surprised to see him go the Stowers route, start at A+ and hope he can produce enough to get to AAA. But slow playing makes some sense given the time off.
College guys usually start in low A, but the more advanced ones will often start in high A. HK is def in that group, but one can argue CC was too. They are very similar. You can see by the stats that CC could have gone straight to A+, and I'm pretty sure that's where he starts next year. The only reason I'd want to be a little aggressive with HK is cause I don't want both of them in the same OF and developing at the same pace. Having both of them coming up and ready, with OF already our strong suit is eventually going to stunt someone's development. I think you lower that risk if you can stagger them by a level, and with HK being older, makes sense to be him. But your points about a weird 2020 and the time off are very valid, so I don't know how things shake out. You could absolutely be totally right. I'm just worried about a logjam we are creating. I mean you've got Mullins/Hays already up. I'm assuming Mounty moves to 1B/DH, and then you've still got Trey. Dropping Stewy from convo, and treating McKenna as a 4th/OF PT guy. THEN you've got a whole nother wave with Neustrom, Watson, Stowers, and Rizer (and that's if you are writing off Diaz), AND you've got Cespedes and Haskin in high A in the OF already. We already seriously have to figure out what to do with guys, or we have a WHOLE lot of trade bait that's going to lose value because people know they are blocked.