The Orioles rookie could not match the other young Jacksons who debuted this season.
The two seasons before this one saw the Orioles enter with a consensus top-ranked prospect who everyone believed would be a strong Rookie of the Year contender. Adley Rutschman’s 2022 ROY campaign was only blunted by the preseason injury that cost him six weeks. Gunnar Henderson rolled to the 2023 ROY win with a rookie season that could hardly have gone any better. Going into the 2024 season, hopes were high that Jackson Holliday would be able to follow in these same footsteps. It didn’t work out that way.
This dream was knocked off course before the regular season began. Though Holliday had a strong spring training, the Orioles opted not to open the season with him on the roster. Mike Elias chose instead to first set the roster with Tyler Nevin as a bench bat, with Nevin being tossed aside before the games even began in favor of veteran infielder Tony Kemp.
This seemed very important at the time, like a big insult to Orioles fans, with the O’s apparently opting to play service time games with Holliday rather than fielding the best possible roster. I recorded a podcast episode that was entitled “Mike Elias Kicks Us In The Teeth.” It is not going into my personal take hall of fame.
That preseason angst didn’t even last all that long. Within two weeks of the season beginning, the Orioles chose to bring up Holliday after all, early enough in the season that he still could have been eligible to qualify the Orioles for a bonus draft pick if he went on to mount a Rookie of the Year-caliber campaign. In a handful of 2024 Triple-A games before the promotion, he blasted the competition for a .333/.482/.595 batting line. There was a lot to sustain the excitement.
Holliday arrived with the Orioles in the middle of an early series against the Red Sox in Boston. Everyone in Birdland was ready for him to get that first hit out of the way right out of the gate. He went 0-4 in his debut, 0-4 again the next day, and moving on to the Brewers, 0-3 the day after that – with seven strikeouts in his first ten at-bats. Even after finally getting his first hit in his fourth game, he went hitless in the next five games after that.
Although it seemed like Holliday did not have any more learning to do at the Triple-A level, this brief big league stint also seemed to impress upon the Orioles that the big league level wasn’t the place to have him work out whatever he needed to work out. Six months later, Holliday batting with the bases loaded and striking out looking at a full count fastball right down the middle still stands out in my memory. (Never mind that Henderson batted immediately after and also struck out looking at a full count pitch.)
Two days later, after picking up his second hit of the season in a game against the Angels, Holliday was on his way back to Norfolk. He totaled 18 strikeouts in his first 36 plate appearances, or if we employ our middle school knowledge of reducing fractions, one in two PA ended in a strikeout.
Over time, a general impression emerged, never formally acknowledged in any way by the team, that Holliday had to improve his timing for MLB-caliber pitching by ditching a high leg kick that did not stop him from dominating the minors. There were signs from Norfolk that he was working on this over a couple of months where he was putting up pretty good rather than elite numbers. In July, he was back to rocking the league, and the Orioles brought him back up to Baltimore, this time for the duration.
From July 31 onward, the Orioles played Holliday nearly every day. Across 50 games and 43 starts, he dropped a batting line of .218/.285/.365 – a .650 OPS, including five home runs. These are not great numbers, but they are good enough numbers that if that was our first impression of Holliday, a lot fewer people would now have bad takes about how he’s a bust and he should be traded before the league catches on. There’s something to build on there.
Holliday’s preseason hype was matched by two other highly-regarded prospects who also happened to be 20-year-olds named Jackson. The other two were both playing in the National League: Jackson Chourio of the Brewers, who signed a pre-debut contract extension, and Maryland native Jackson Merrill of the Padres.
If you compare only their season-ending batting lines together, Holliday’s 2024 season is a disappointing one indeed. Chourio wrapped the year as a 3.8 bWAR player, batting .275/.327/.464 (a 117 OPS+) over 148 games played. Merrill, who has a strong chance of being the NL ROY, finished even better, notching 4.4 bWAR and a 127 OPS+, with 24 home runs hit over 156 games. Holliday’s 0.1 WAR, .565 OPs, and 66 OPS+ sure are not that.
The great finishes for Chourio and Merrill obscure somewhat the fact that these guys had their early share of struggles too, even if neither one of them had as rough of a first ten games as Holliday. Consider that in late June, Chourio finished his 70th game with just a .635 OPS. Merrill bottomed out in game #63 at a .648 OPS.
Holliday’s 50 games where he OPSed .650 are right in line with this roughly two-month adjustment period. The only real difference is that since Holliday couldn’t convince the team to keep him around in April, he didn’t get the same opportunity to work out his struggles at the major league level in the middle of the season.
This could turn out to be pure, uncut copium. If Holliday gets started next season with another brutal month of April, then it’s not going to seem very much like he learned his lesson and he’s ready to launch to the elite level that his peers reached by August and September of this year. If he launches like Chourio and Merrill did, I’m going to tell anyone who needs to hear it that I told them so.
Unless there’s a disastrous spring training or a surprise injury, Holliday should be on the 2025 Opening Day roster, probably as the starting second baseman. We’ll all be waiting with anticipation to see what kind of durable adjustment he’s made.
Tomorrow: The Tommy John crew (Kyle Bradish, John Means, Tyler Wells)