Anyone with Holliday’s track record would have gotten the hype. It wasn’t just the Orioles ginning it up. He’s a 1:1 pick, considered the top prospect in the game, and went through four levels of the minors in a year at age 19. On top of that, his dad was a star player for 15 years. Of course there was going to be hype!
I have zero problems with any decisions the O’s have made with him or how they handled his time in the majors. He’ll go back to Norfolk, re-set, and be back up later this year. Not everyone has a perfect glide path to the majors - ask Mike Trout.
The median #1 overall pick is worth about 15-17 wins. Phil Nevin. Jeff King. Pat Burrell. Something like that. 80th percentile #1 is something like 40 wins.
Gunnar is 208 games into his career and is 23 years old, and already more valuable than roughly 40% of all #1 overalls.
Since the 1994 draft (post-ARod) Joe Mauer is the only #1 overall to have reached 50 rWAR. At his career pace Gunnar will need 1190 games to get to 50 rWAR, or about 7.3 seasons.
So, yea, he would be doing fine if he'd been taken #1.