I think Jackson Holliday is going to start the season with the Orioles.
That’s not based on any sort of inside information I have. It’s a hunch. It’s a feeling of inevitability. I always kinda thought Jackson Holliday would start the season with the Orioles. My gut told me it would take a horrendously disappointing spring for the Orioles to not bring Holliday with them out of Sarasota. He has … not had that.
Part of the reason I think he will make the team is because he should make the team. The Orioles didn’t upgrade at second base (or third if they had preferred having Jordan Westburg at second) this offseason. In doing so, they left themselves vulnerable to having a fan base furious if Holliday performed well in spring training (as he has) and he didn’t make the club. This would be unforced error. If the Orioles definitively wanted to make sure they could keep Holliday at Triple-A Norfolk even if he looked the part in the spring, they needed to make sure they had a qualified option at the big league level instead. This is a World Series contender we’re talking about.
Which isn’t to say the Orioles have to take an all-or-nothing mindset in terms of Holliday, either. If they truly don’t believe he’s ready, they’ll be forced to make do with the likes of Ramón Urías, Nick Maton and/or Kolten Wong until he is. But if there was a genuine fear that Holliday might not be ready, entering the season with these three as the alternate options would be borderline malpractice. I refuse to believe that.
I think the Orioles operated with the belief that Holliday would make the team. I also think they’re taking MLB’s Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI) quite seriously. It’s the same system that allowed them to pick up the No. 32 overall pick in the upcoming 2024 MLB Draft thanks to Gunnar Henderson winning American League Rookie of the Year last year. And it doesn’t uniquely require Holliday having to win Rookie of the Year (or even finish in the top three of voting this year). By having him on the Opening Day roster, if Holliday ends up being a top-three finisher in MVP voting even in 2026, that will net the Orioles an additional early draft pick.
While we all tend to dislike every major pro sports commissioner, this is another rules change in the Rob Manfred era having a seriously positive impact on the sport. He truly could go down as one of the most impactful commissioners in the modern era of professional sports.
The only real argument at this point for Holliday to not be on the Opening Day roster would be a concern about how it might impact him mentally if he were to make the team, struggle and be sent back down. We need to keep in mind that, as advanced as he seems and as beneficial as it might be that he’s the son of a high-level major leaguer, we’re still talking about a 20-year-old. And more notably, a 20-year-old who has played a total of 54 games above High-A.
For comparison’s sake, Henderson played more than twice as many — 117 games — at elevated affiliate ball before he made his debut. Famously, Manny Machado skipped the Triple-A level altogether but still played 109 games at Double-A.
But Henderson is an apt comparison. He hit just. .201 in his first two months of 2023 after making the team last year … then became Rookie of the Year. But even if Holliday were to struggle to a point where he had to be sent back down, it’s tough for me to believe that’s the moment that might “break” him. He’s seemed so mentally and emotionally advanced for both his age and experience level. He would seem to have a significant advantage in terms of his ability to handle adversity.
Moreover, a quote has stuck with me for more than a decade that an Orioles front office executive once told me. (I say it that way not because I’m trying to protect them but simply because, while I think I remember exactly who it was, I can’t say it with certainty and haven’t created a record of it to fall back on, and that’s more than you needed to know but now you know it.) When I asked this person about the possibility of calling up a prospect too early and the impact it could have on him if he had to be sent back down, the response was perfect (although, truly, my memory is not good enough for this to be verbatim).
“If sending a player back down when they’re struggling is what breaks them, something was always going to break them,” the executive essentially said.
Jackson Holliday should be here on Opening Day. And at this point I’m feeling confident that (barring injury) he will be.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles