Orioles Youngster Jackson Holliday Has Discovered A Winning Offensive Profile With All-Star Potential

The Orioles dealt one first-overall pick this week, and deeply entertained dealing another one, according to just about everyone in the national media paid big money to cover the MLB trade deadline.

Adley Rutschman is gone, like we always knew he’d be, and Jackson Holliday very well could have been. There was clearly a price on his head, that was probably overinflated (that’s been Mike Elias’s way at every deadline whether buying or selling) and no one met it. Which may very well be for the best. If some other things change in Birdland (like getting a real MLB manager next year (instead of an obsequious puppet), there's reason to believe Holliday can truly soar.

The first-overall pick in 2022, unlike many of his cohorts in the alleged “young core” has taken some substantial corrective measures to try to save what was becoming another lost season for him. Would be great if Gunnar Henderson, the second player Elias ever selected on the same night as Rutschman, did the same, but alas, we aren’t allowed to ask for much as fans of this failing franchise.

Holliday, still just 22, hit rock bottom in late June, and since then has clearly prized making contact over trying to keep up with a lineup that wants to see how high and how far they can hit the ball no matter the situation - only five teams have scored fewer runs than Baltimore since the All-Star break and only four are striking out at a higher rate.

Amid all of this, Holliday is having his best sustained stretch of his career – I’m not talking about running into two fastballs to juice short-sample size OPS; I’m talking a mature approach that speaks to what he is at this stage of his career and not what Elias overhyped him to be (a five-tool, power-hitting shortstop capable of maybe even displacing Henderson from that position).

New And Improved

Holliday has been an on-base machine since July 1, clearly accepting that this needs to be a carrying trait for him, which will allow his elite straight-line speed to make an impact on ballgames. He's making necessary corrections seeking a flatter swing-plane, and trying to avoid the launch-angle madness that has doomed this perpetual rebuild and stalled his career.

Holliday has walked 16 times and struck out just 17 times in 26 games since July 1 (entering play Wednesday). That is not a misprint. The Orioles are 16-10 in those games and in 83 plate appearances in that span the second-baseman has a slash of : 318/.446/.364.

Wow.

Especially when you consider from his return from the 60-day IL to open the season until the end of June he had a slash of .200/.281/.390 (.671) in 35 games (15-20 record) over 114 PA with 33 strikeouts to 12 walks.

This is a complete reboot that was long overdue, and that hopefully is somewhat replicable. And it better be enough to get him regular at bats – even against tough lefties – for the rest of a season that Elias already punted on. Development uber alles.

What Did He Figure Out?

Swing plane is getting a lot of attention but if you study his charts on baseballsavant and break it down by month, his angle of contact and where he is meeting the ball off the ground, the numbers really haven’t really changed much.

He seems to be learning to lay off extreme velo at the top of the zone he just can’t get to do or make real impact with if he does time it up. He's shortened his approach to make more contact with the in-zone fastballs he sees.

Since July 1, Holliday is basically tied for second among every MLB hitter for “average miss distance” against fastballs of just 0.4 inches (see for yourself here). As the kind of nerd who has followed this number in his career, I still have a hard time believing this is real.

Prior to that, Holliday was one of the worst in baseball in that regard missing fastballs by an average of one inch; before July he was getting under fastballs 46% of the time per baseballsavant.com and whiffing on over 30% of them. Since July 1 he is under fastballs just 35% of the time and whiffing 15% vs all fastballs. That’s a massive correction folks.

A year ago Holliday had a -8 run value vs fastballs, one of the worst in baseball that begged major questions. With these corrections he’s now essentially neutral for the season (RV of 0 vs FB) a huge step in the right direction. And he has literally changed his steps.

Per statcast data he is standing 2.5 inches further from the plate than last season and impacting the ball two inches further toward the pitcher … which lends itself to want to get the ball in play and not be late on as many fastballs. He’s actually cut down significantly on his opposite-field attack angle – going from 6 degrees in that direction last season to 1 degree this season.

He also is making an effort to cut down on the amount of times he max swings (75 mph or higher, which is well above his average of 70 mph). Last year he swung 75mph or harder 10.7% of the time and this year it’s down to 6.7%.

And with him being further off the plate and being more selective, Holliday is laying off the outside corner and outside pitches out of the zone far more than a year ago which is obviously helping that soaring whiff rate come down.

Jackson Holliday Swing Decisions By Zone, 2025 to 2026 | www.baseballsavant.com

Can He Keep It Up?

Holliday has brought his season OBP up to .350 – if he finished the season there that’s a major win. OBP, runs scored, stolen bases, doubles – those are the metrics that have always driven my evaluation of this player. And nothing has changed for me.

If he achieves numbers that are anywhere close to his best in the minors from those categories to MLB, then no one is going to care if 15 homers or 20 homers or, go ahead and dream on 30 homers, comes with it. That should have always been ancillary.

If this org gets a real manager one would hope he has a real base-stealing expert somewhere on that staff. This kid should be putting up 35 double/35 steal seasons at an absolute minimum if he is a 35% OBP guy. There are major gains to be made there if they can reinforce principles to help him (his recent swim move going into second base filled me with hope).

We’ve seen him start to creep up the batting order. If Henderson remains inept at the plate, Holliday in the No. 2 spot could be interesting (even with Blaze Alexander coming back). Regardless, in late June Holliday was looking like a lost cause, as lost as Colton Cowser with seemingly no player-development answers in sight.

In August and September, he should be a primary reason to keep watching this team play every night, if not THE primary reason, along with rookie catcher Samuel Basallo (who himself turns 22 later this month).

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