An analyst’s take on Orioles’ Jackson Holliday: ‘I still think he will be a star’

Now that he has had 208 big league plate appearances, batting .189/.255/.311/.565 at age 20 with the Orioles last year, it can be easy to forget that everybody ranked Jackson Holliday as MLB’s No. 1 prospect heading into last season.

He had played the 2023 season – his first full year in the minors – starting at Single-A Delmarva and rising three levels to end the year at Triple-A Norfolk. He hit .323 with a .941 OPS in 581 plate appearances between the Shorebirds, IronBirds, Baysox and Tides.

Then he did what Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman had earlier done – he rose to be the No. 1 prospect in the sport.

The Athletic’s Keith Law wrote this about Holliday in ranking him No. 1 early in February of 2024:

“He has exceptional hand-eye coordination, so even when he’s fooled by a pitch he often manages to make contact with it, even hard contact. I do think major-league pitchers will force him to shorten up his swing sometimes, as he nearly always swings full bore and no one has given him any reason to do otherwise. He’s a 50/55 runner, likely to end up average once he fills out, a process that will begin as soon as he starts shaving every day. Holliday is a natural shortstop whose position wouldn’t be in doubt if the Orioles didn’t already have an incumbent there — and Holliday is a better defender than Gunnar Henderson at short — but he’s moved around the infield a little and could come up at third or second if Baltimore doesn’t want to dislodge the AL Rookie of the Year. He reminds me in several ways of Troy Tulowitzki, but has the advantage of the left-handed bat and has a better feel for the strike zone. I think he’ll hit .280-.300 with strong walk rates and 25+ homers a year to go with above-average defense at shortstop, and that’s a profile that can win an MVP award.”

Now, a year later, the analysts have all seen Holliday rise to the major leagues and struggle. The lefty batter produced an OPS+ of 66 over 60 games.

But analysts I recently talked with, to include Law and MLBPipeline.com’s Jim Callis, are still bullish on Holliday. They understood it was reasonable to expect that he would probably have initial struggles.

“He definitely had some holes,” Law told me in a recent interview. “He’s 21 [as of December 4th] and would be in, I believe, this year’s draft had he gone to college. To me, the fact he was in the majors at all just shows how good he was out of the gate. I’m not changing my evaluation of him at all. That a guy that is 21 couldn’t hit big league pitching the first time but has hit everywhere else and shown he can make adjustments, he’s just a smart kid with a ton of athleticism.

“I still think he will be a star.”

Holliday is expected to start the season at second base for the Orioles, but Law said the O’s should be flexible.

“They may have to change the plan for him in the next nine or 12 months,” he said. “Maybe they say he starts back in Norfolk and we will have you work on some specific things. Like, we’ve identified a particular vulnerability, major league pitchers identified it, and let’s go down and work on that.

“But you may also say you will stay in the majors, bat ninth, and work with our major league coaches. We have the best equipment here and best training stuff here. Have you work on things here. The plan just has to shift a bit for him, because he got there so fast. I doubt that even when they drafted him they did not think he would arrive this fast.”

O’s manager Brandon Hyde told reporters he is likely to give Holliday every-other-day at-bats at the outset of the spring games. He wants to see less swing-and-miss in his game. Holliday hit just .118 off breaking balls in the majors last year and swung and missed at nearly 40 percent of such pitches.

“Being able to control the strike zone up, to be able to stay on the breaking ball, the changeups down and away. Stay on the baseball, more of a line drive approach,” Hyde said. “I’m not looking for him to hit homers. I want him to be an exciting player. I want the bunt to be a part of his game, I want the line-drive single the other way to be a part of his game. Walking. We need to get more aggressive on the bases. Just more comfortable playing. We’re not looking for him to hit homers, we’re looking for him to just get on base and be a tough out.”