Jackson Holliday may have taken not making Orioles roster personally

Baseball has always been a game that has been rife with shenanigans. Yeah that's right, I said it. There's never really been a time when baseball was totally on the up-and-up. Whether we're talking about steroids, doctoring the baseball, and corking bats, or larger systemic issues like segregation, collusion, and using public funds to build stadiums for billionaire owners, baseball fans have had to turn a blind eye to some questionable things throughout the history of America's pastime.

One of the more recent examples of baseball shenanigans is service time manipulation, which is a widespread practice in MLB that keeps top prospects in the minors for longer, thereby allowing teams to hold their rights for an extra year.

We're seeing that now with the Baltimore Orioles and Jackson Holliday, and it's becoming more and more ridiculous as the young infielder lays waste to AAA. Holliday, who is the son of former MLB All-Star Matt Holliday, is the top-ranked prospect in all of baseball. He was drafted with the first overall pick by the Orioles in 2022, and he's had a meteoric rise through Baltimore's minor league system in the less-than-two-years since.

Holliday began last season in A ball, but worked his way to AAA Norfolk for the last 18 games of the year. His .941 OPS through 154 total minor league games earned him a spring training invite this year, and once there, he continued to show why so many people around baseball are so excited to see him in the majors. Holliday played 15 games this spring, posting a slash line of .311/.354/.600.

Jackson Holliday has made an emphatic case to be in the majors

Despite Holliday's impressive play, the Orioles sent him back to AAA to begin the year, and to the surprise of no one, Holliday is again crushing it. Through just five games, Holliday has 20 total bases and an obscene 1.248 OPS. He has 8 RBIs, 12 runs scored and is a huge reason why the Tides are 4-1 with a plus-17 run differential.

His dad recently spoke about the disappointment of seeing his son sent back to AAA, saying "There's a business element to it, and there's no way around it" in an interview with 590 The Fan radio in St. Louis, though he did express confidence that his son would get his call soon.

The Orioles have been able to use a couple of excuses to keep Holliday in the minors. First, the major league roster is stacked. Baltimore won a loaded A.L. East last year and was already on the short list of World Series favorites heading into this season, even before trading for Brewers ace Corbin Burnes in February.

Orioles general manager Mike Elias has said that Holliday didn't make the major league roster so that he could get more experience in the field after switching from shortstop to second base (a flimsy excuse at best, since second base is an easier position to play than shortstop), and because he needed to improve against high-level lefties, which also doesn't pass the smell test, since he'd get much more experience facing top pitchers in the big leagues.

At 20 years old, Holliday would be the second-youngest player in the majors if he got called up, behind only Jackson Chourio of the Brewers. Chourio has already shown that he belongs, posting a .931 OPS through five games, which has made the eight-year, $82 million contract he recently signed seem like an enormous bargain.

The Brewers have treated Chourio like the star he is and will become, even batting him leadoff on Opening Day. Signing him to a long-term contract removed any temptation to manipulate his service time, and the Orioles would be wise to do the same with Holliday. He's already shown what he can do, and after the success of 22-year-old Gunnar Henderson following his August call-up last year, there's proof that young players can find instant success in Baltimore.

If Holliday continues to kill it in Norfolk, the calls for the Orioles to promote him will only intensify, and the organization will only look worse and worse by keeping him down. With the recent trend of Chourio and other prospects signing long-term extensions well before their rookie contracts expire, plus the fact that Baltimore has already missed out on the chance to gain an additional draft pick by having Holliday on the Opening Day roster, it just doesn't make sense to keep a player that is obviously talented enough to be in the big leagues down on the farm. Let's stop the shenanigans.