Jackson Holliday 2023

[owknows]

27 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Here is this last spring.

 

Here is a picture of him in 2017.

Maybe it's just me but he looks roughly the same size.

He is nowhere near three bills.

He's looking a little thick thru the midsection to me... but I was mostly stretching the point for comedic effect

[NCRaven]

1 hour ago, Mooreisbetter27 said:

He’s not gonna get promoted tomorrow. But I feel like he absolutely could and easily hold his own. 

Sounds like what we said about Gunnar.  If we want the whole left side of the infield batting under .200, we might as we’ll role with Mateo.  Rookies struggle.  Even Manny was brought up for his glove at 3B, at first.

And, I know.  Gunnar will be fine.

[Tony-OH]

On 5/19/2023 at 8:21 PM, Alasdaire said:

Does Holliday get the 70 hit tool at some point?

Holliday was considered a 60 before the draft. As a point of reference, the only 70 hit tools players I'm aware of are: Sal Frelick when he came out of Boston College in 2021, Temarr Johnson out of high school in 2022, and Dylan Crews in this year's draft out of LSU. Frelick hit ~.360 at BC the year he came out and has hit ~.325 in all levels through AAA.

Holliday set the all-time, national hits record as a senior in high school while batting ~.700. Then he hit ~.300 across two levels in 2022 and ~.400 across two levels so far this season; ~.360 overall. High BB% and low K%. Seems to pass the eye test too in terms of his swing.

Not sure what else you would be looking for as far as the hit tool goes.

I would grade his hit tool a 50 right now, 70 grade as an upside. He understands the strike zone and has the ability to get his barrel on any pitch in the zone. He's clearly the best player on the field in every minor league game he's played in so far.

He looks very special.

[Hallas]

3 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

I would grade his hit tool a 50 right now, 70 grade as an upside. He understands the strike zone and has the ability to get his barrel on any pitch in the zone. He's clearly the best player on the field in every minor league game he's played in so far.

He looks very special.

So you think he could put up a ~.750 OPS right now in the majors?  That's pretty impressive.

[Tony-OH]

On 5/20/2023 at 9:33 PM, deward said:

That's a big boy homer. The Baseball America guys were speculating on their podcast that he may have even more power potential than was anticipated. 

When you start hitting left center home runs left-handed, you have some legitimate pop. And he's just 19. Every day he does something that I'm like, "I didn't know he could do that!" 

 

[Tony-OH]

3 minutes ago, Hallas said:

So you think he could put up a ~.750 OPS right now in the majors?  That's pretty impressive.

It's hard to say because we haven't seen him hit against upper level pitching, but I can say that I've seen him lay off pitches just off the plate and rarely swings and miss. He's 5 months younger than Manny was when he played his "19 year old " season and Manny ended the year in Baltimore and never put up the plate discipline or power that Holliday has already showed.

What's he's doing so far has not been done by any Orioles farm hand was was drafted out of high school since I've been covering them. 

[Banders]

The young man sits atop the wRC+ and OPS leaderboards for the entirety of the minor leagues. What a talent. 

https://ibb.co/phJ3RCy

 

[Hallas]

15 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

It's hard to say because we haven't seen him hit against upper level pitching, but I can say that I've seen him lay off pitches just off the plate and rarely swings and miss. He's 5 months younger than Manny was when he played his "19 year old " season and Manny ended the year in Baltimore and never put up the plate discipline or power that Holliday has already showed.

What's he's doing so far has not been done by any Orioles farm hand was was drafted out of high school since I've been covering them. 

The development of Manny's plate discipline was pretty unexpected to me.  He never was like a Juan Soto but he's consistently had way better than average chase rates after just being average as a minor leaguer/rookie.

 

The fact thay Holliday is already there is pretty stunning to me.

[owknows]

16 minutes ago, Banders said:

The young man sits atop the wRC+ and OPS leaderboards for the entirety of the minor leagues. What a talent. 

https://ibb.co/phJ3RCy

 

The fact that Creed Willems is number 4 is even more mind-blowing

[bluedog]

2 hours ago, owknows said:

The fact that Creed Willems is number 4 is even more mind-blowing

Kerstad making noise at #21.

Also crazy that we have 3 players in the top 21 and none of them are Cowser, Westburg, Mayo, Ortiz or Norby...

[baltfan]

4 hours ago, owknows said:

The fact that Creed Willems is number 4 is even more mind-blowing

Willems should be getting some national hype for bottom of top 100. He is still very young. 

[Mr-splash]

6 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

It's hard to say because we haven't seen him hit against upper level pitching, but I can say that I've seen him lay off pitches just off the plate and rarely swings and miss. He's 5 months younger than Manny was when he played his "19 year old " season and Manny ended the year in Baltimore and never put up the plate discipline or power that Holliday has already showed.

What's he's doing so far has not been done by any Orioles farm hand was was drafted out of high school since I've been covering them. 

This. Manny surprisingly held his own as a hitter his first couple of seasons. But the bat didn't become a real threat until his 4th season in the majors. It should be noted that when Manny went down to high A for 3 games when he was 22 he had an OPS over 1.800, albeit in just 3 games. Most if not every starting position player on this team could go to A ball right now and probably immediately be the best player in the league. The difference between A ball and MLB ball is titanic. One step at a time. I think hes ready for AA pitching. 

[sportsfan8703]

There’s a possibility he gets the Gunnar treatment and is up on the last day to be eligible for the postseason roster this year all while maintaining his rookie eligibility for next year. 
 

Enjoy the ride. He’s got 25-30 games in September to play SS/2B before the playoffs. 
 

Why not?

[Tony-OH]

3 hours ago, Mr-splash said:

This. Manny surprisingly held his own as a hitter his first couple of seasons. But the bat didn't become a real threat until his 4th season in the majors. It should be noted that when Manny went down to high A for 3 games when he was 22 he had an OPS over 1.800, albeit in just 3 games. Most if not every starting position player on this team could go to A ball right now and probably immediately be the best player in the league. The difference between A ball and MLB ball is titanic. One step at a time. I think hes ready for AA pitching. 

Of course he needs to go to AA next, and I've said in previous threads that I don't see him in the big leagues this year due to several reasons, including 4 legitimate options ahead of him to play SS.

He's doing things statistically, including controlling the strike zone that we have not seen in such a young player. Now Gunnar lost his true 19-year old season because of COVID, but at 20-years old (really 6 months older than Holliday), Henderson slashed .231/.343/.432/.775 striking out two times to every walk.

At 19-years old, Adley Rutschman slashed .234/.322/.306/.629 with a 27 to 39 BB-K ratio.

Between Delmarva and Aberdeen, Holliday is slashing .394/.513/.701/1.214 with an astounding 31 to 27 BB to K ratio. On top of it, he's committed just two errors in 27 starts at SS and has made several outstanding plays that shows his defensive abilities. 

So while we are used to players going one level at a time and moving more slowly, Holiday appears to be one of those very special players. As a 1-1 pick, but not a consensus 1-1 pick by any stretch of the imagination, it's expected that he would do well, but he's doing historically well right now.

They may have to move him to AA soon because pitchers in the Sally League are already pitching around him at times. 

So if there were no controllability issues, do I think Holliday could play in the major leagues right now? I do. Do I think he would struggle a bit up there because of the jump in competition, sure, most 19-year olds throughout history did. 

If Holliday can go up to AA and do well this year, I think he truly puts himself on the radar next year. Is there a chance at sometime in the second half of next year the Orioles field a defense of Henderson, Ortiz and Holliday (Ortiz is a slightly ahead of Holliday for me defensive at SS, but I need to see more of Holliday before saying that fully)? I think that's a very real possibility. 

Now, could they keep him in the minors all next year as well in order to keep him off the 40-man and not have to pay him so close to Adley and Henderson and even Ortiz? Sure. The financial situation can never be discounted. 

Right now, Holliday is a better player all around overall prospect than Henderson ever was in the minor leagues and Henderson was the #1 prospect in baseball coming into this season. I don't talk in hyperboles and if anything, I'm harder on Orioles prospects than many others that evaluate them. 

Holliday is looking more and more special every day. He's about as "can't miss" as it gets for a 19-year old in High-A ball.

 

[Bemorewins]

If what Tony says is true, and I have ever reason to believe in his evaluation/opinion of O's prospects since he sees and studies them more than most; I am wondering how Holliday's explosive/unexpected growth changes the O's plans going forward?

Would they try to keep him down longer, bring him up sooner, or work to extend him very early?

If he was of the wunderkind guys who can handle the bigs at 19/20ish; he's a guy who has superstar/multi-all star/even better potential. If he is this good, how was that missed during the draft evaluation process? Or maybe another way to ask this, is what was missed about him then that is true now (which was only a year ago)?