Jackson Holliday 2024

[spleen1015]

26 minutes ago, interloper said:

Holliday now has 120 AB in AAA this year: .275/.429/.458/.887, 4 HR, 10 2B, 3 SB. Overall, very good, especially the OBP. But it's hard to learn much from the statline when guys like Daniel Johnson are also lighting it up down there. 

What are folks' thoughts on the following:

• If he continues roughly an .850+ pace, what is the right time to bring him back up?
• How will Elias know when to bring him up - what is he looking for beyond the statline? Exit velo? More XBH? Some nuanced, hard-to-quantify stuff relayed by AAA coaches? 

I think after what happened with his first stint in the majors, Elias is going to leave Holliday down until he meets the number of ABs that he wanted for all of the other prospects. What that number is, I dunno, but a lot of folks felt he left Adley, Gunnar, etc in AAA long after they were ready. So, after the 'failure' of Holliday's first trip to the bigs, I think he stays down for a while. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't come back up this year.

But who really knows.

[Moose Milligan]

I'd say there's a decent chance he doesn't come back up this year, too.  And I'm ok with that.  

 

[Bemorewins]

2 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I'd say there's a decent chance he doesn't come back up this year, too.  And I'm ok with that.  

 

As much as I love Holliday's talent and believe in his abilities, I'm fine with that too (at least for as long as Mateo can be a contributing member to the team offensively, which I hope is all year or most of it).

But the thing is even if Holliday doesn't come back up until Opening Day next year, he is still going to face a significant with making the jump. Yes, he will be more experienced and better prepared, but it's still going to be really hard for him as it is for all players in this era of MLB.

Hopefully more fans will adjust their expectations accordingly and hopefully this situation has showed us that young prospects (no matter how talented) in all probability will most likely take a little time to figure things out (even after they arrive in the Show).

Whenever Mayo arrives, I hope that fans are reasonable with their expectations of him as well.

[Moose Milligan]

17 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

 

Whenever Mayo arrives, I hope that fans are reasonable with their expectations of him as well.

You must be new here.

[interloper]

26 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I'd say there's a decent chance he doesn't come back up this year, too.  And I'm ok with that.  

 

I'm ok with it, too. If it's not a slam dunk that he'll help us in the playoffs by August or so, I think you just let him cook the remainder of the year. 

But there's also plenty of scenarios where he helps this team this year.

[Bemorewins]

3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

You must be new here.

You know I'm not...lol

But you know what they say about insanity? That whole continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 

How many times will it take for many to learn that instant success is the exception not the norm? (Even for the best prospects.) 

[Hallas]

6 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

You know I'm not...lol

But you know what they say about insanity? That whole continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 

How many times will it take for many to learn that instant success is the exception not the norm? (Even for the best prospects.) 

Kind of hard to learn that lesson when we have 2 straight #1 prospects and both of them end up playing like all-stars, lol.

[interloper]

For me, I think it boils down to wanting to see more power. If he's driving the ball more, that tells me his swing and his swing decisions are confident, mechanically he's sound, and that he's improving. Because that's the most obvious part of his game that you'd want to see improvements from. 

[spleen1015]

5 minutes ago, Hallas said:

Kind of hard to learn that lesson when we have 2 straight #1 prospects and both of them end up playing like all-stars, lol.

They weren't playing like All Stars for a while. That's the part people forget.

[Hallas]

Just now, spleen1015 said:

They weren't playing like All Stars for a while. That's the part people forget.

I mean, Rutschman had a month where he played like a typical catcher immediately following his injury that caused him to miss ST, and then played like an all star his entire rookie campaign and was 2nd in ROY voting.

 

Gunnar was on fire during his 2022 call-up, had a slump to open 2023, and then won ROY.

 

I'd say they both did, or close.  None of their initial lumps were anything close to a being 2 for 34 with a 50% whiff rate.

[Pickles]

6 minutes ago, Hallas said:

I mean, Rutschman had a month where he played like a typical catcher immediately following his injury that caused him to miss ST, and then played like an all star his entire rookie campaign and was 2nd in ROY voting.

 

Gunnar was on fire during his 2022 call-up, had a slump to open 2023, and then won ROY.

 

I'd say they both did, or close.  None of their initial lumps were anything close to a being 2 for 34 with a 50% whiff rate.

You're right.  I don't know why this got the response it did.

[spleen1015]

8 minutes ago, Hallas said:

I mean, Rutschman had a month where he played like a typical catcher immediately following his injury that caused him to miss ST, and then played like an all star his entire rookie campaign and was 2nd in ROY voting.

 

Gunnar was on fire during his 2022 call-up, had a slump to open 2023, and then won ROY.

 

I'd say they both did, or close.  None of their initial lumps were anything close to a being 2 for 34 with a 50% whiff rate.

Take a look at Adley's numbers for May 2022 and the first part of June. Hardly All Star numbers.

And you said it yourself about Gunnar in the early part of 2023.

I think it speaks to how good they are that they were able to overcome these slumps and still finish like they did.

[Frobby]

31 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

You know I'm not...lol

But you know what they say about insanity? That whole continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 

How many times will it take for many to learn that instant success is the exception not the norm? (Even for the best prospects.) 

I would not say it’s either the exception or the norm.  Remember this study I did of players who debuted in 2017?

 

[Moose Milligan]

32 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

You know I'm not...lol

But you know what they say about insanity? That whole continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 

How many times will it take for many to learn that instant success is the exception not the norm? (Even for the best prospects.) 

Yeah, I get it.  It's annoying.

People are just excited, understandably so.  Patience, IMO, is at an all-time low on here.  It's weird, it's like when this team was winning, like, 50 or 60 games a few years back, there was more patience...people knew that they were in it for the long haul.  Most understood what Elias was doing and that it was going to take time.

Right now it seems like people are on edge because we're contenders.  As such, if someone like Mayo were to come up and struggle, I think people would be quick to want to send him down.

It's also backup QB syndrome.  Most popular player on an NFL team sometimes is the backup QB.

[Hallas]

11 minutes ago, spleen1015 said:

Take a look at Adley's numbers for May 2022 and the first part of June. Hardly All Star numbers.

And you said it yourself about Gunnar in the early part of 2023.

I think it speaks to how good they are that they were able to overcome these slumps and still finish like they did.

So... Adley had a month where he played like a typical catcher.

 

Fun fact, during his initial slump, his BABIP was .254 and both his hard hit% and average EV was higher than his full season stats.  So we had some data that suggested he might be hitting into bad luck.  On top of that he was coming off injury and missed most of spring training, so we had reason to expect him to start off slowly.

 

Gunnar already had 5 weeks under his belt when he was playing really well by the time he had his April slump last year.

Edited May 20 by Hallas