Wednesday really is shaping up to be a national holiday (no pun intended) for Major League Baseball. 20-year-old phenom Jackson Holliday, the most hyped minor league prospect since Bryce Harper, will take the field at Fenway Park for the first time with the Baltimore Orioles.
Call your dad 𧥠pic.twitter.com/a7wUO13W9A
â Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) April 10, 2024
Eyes across baseball and indeed, the sporting world, will be tuned into every at-bat to see if Holliday gets his first hit, his first home run, et cetera. And given his track record, hitting over .300 at four different levels on the minors at age 19 and shredding AAA pitching for 10 games this year, it's likely Holliday will give onlookers something to get excited about.
Whatever he does Wednesday, though, the bigger story is that the Orioles were willing to bring Holliday up now, with enough time to accrue 172 days of service time and qualify for MLB's prospect promotion incentive, per Front Office Sports. And that spells trouble for the rest of the candidates, because make no mistake: Holliday is going to win the American League Rookie of the Year Award.
What makes Jackson Holliday so special?
Matt Holliday's son: Future All-Star.
â Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 14, 2013
The âJackson Holliday is awesomeâ tweet going the most viral in the wake of his promotion was ESPN's Buster Olney predicting Holliday would be an All-Star all the way back in 2013. Matt Holliday was still five years away from retirement and on the path to a World Series appearance with the Cardinals and his son Jackson was nine. But Olney saw then what we all are about to see togetherâthere's something different about this kid.
The phrase âbaseball ratâ has almost never applied more to any individual prospect, because Holliday grew up around major league clubhouses with a burning desire to get himself to one as soon as possible. His pure hit tool, graded a 70 by MLB Pipeline on the 20-80 scale, might be one of the best in the majors the minute he steps on the field. 70 puts him in line with the Freddie Freemans and Corey Seagers of the world, perhaps without the same kind of power those two have developed just yet.
But it isn't just the pure tools that make Holliday a future transcendent talent (did we mention he's also a plus-runner and fielder?). He brings a level of poise and quiet confidence that are rare to see among ballplayers of any age, let alone those too young to buy a drink. The fame of becoming a big leaguer won't phase him, because his entire life has been about not only arriving at this moment but being ready for it. Don't be surprised if he casually collects three hits against the Red Sox on Wednesday night.
Who are the other rookies he's competing with?
Coming into the year, the three betting favorites for AL Rookie of the Year were Holliday and a pair of Texas Rangers, playoff breakout star Evan Carter and fresh 2023 draftee Wyatt Langford. Both got the edge on Holliday by starting the season on the big-league roster, but neither has taken much advantage of the opportunity.
Carter is hitting just .182, though his on-base percentage is still good, while Langford has just a .640 OPS and has yet to hit a homer. Meanwhile, though no one doubted Holliday was MLB-ready, there were doubts about how long it would take for the Orioles to call him up and start his service time clock. Now that he's arrived and only gave the boys in Texas a ten-game head start, it's game on.
And although Holliday is more than capable of being the best rookie in either league, it doesn't hurt that the AL is the shallower talent pool. There are no highly regarded rookie pitchers already on big league rosters, while all the international stars (see: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shota Imanaga, Jung Hoo Lee) went to the National League. It really is just a 150-game race between Holliday and the pair of Rangers and if anything, it helps that Holliday is the one without a teammate to compete against.
What will it take for Jackson Holliday to win the award?
If the level of competition in years past is any indication, Holliday will have to put up some pretty serious numbers. The past two rookies of the year, Julio RodrĂguez and Gunnar Henderson, both put up season OPS's over .800 and exactly 6.2 rWAR. In addition, both had another rookie behind them with an .800+ OPS in Adley Rutschman and Triston Casas. So history tells us not only will Holliday have to be elite, but he'll have to fend off at least one of those pesky Rangers.
But the thing about Holliday is that he's never been anything besides elite, at any level of competition. He's got a .948 career OPS in the minor leagues and he's never been below .928 for any contiguous stretch of over 20 games at the same level. His compact, lightning-quick lefty swing is slump-proof, and although the Orioles claimed they wanted him to get more polished against lefties in MiLB, he still hit .296 against them last year.
Yes, this is Major League Baseball we're talking about here and yes, it will take some adjusting to, but Jackson Holliday knows nothing but success on a baseball field. And by all indications, he's not the type of person to be satisfied by whatever success he's achieved in the past. He wants more, and perhaps the best reason to predict he'll win the Rookie of the Year Award is that it will take more than that to satisfy him this year alone.
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