Orioles made a mistake no one saw coming with Jackson Holliday

The Baltimore Orioles promoting their top prospect and the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball. Jackson Holliday, felt like a long time coming. Holliday had proven he was ready to go by now, and the Orioles finally made the call everyone had been waiting for.

Not only did the 20-year-old run through the minors with ease, but he performed at a very high level in Spring Training to the point where when Baltimore sent him down, it felt like the only reason for it was for them to manipulate his service time. It turns out that the Orioles might have been onto something.

With how he has performed, the question of "was Holliday brought up too early" is one worth asking. The answer could very well be yes.

Orioles promoting Jackson Holliday before he was ready is a mistake nobody saw coming

The sample size is small, obviously, but the results are absolutely staggering. So far, Holliday has a total of one hit, a single, in his 30 at-bats. Yes, he has a .033 batting average, a mark lower than Bartolo Colon's career .084 BA. He has drawn two walks compared to 16 strikeouts. He has fanned in over half of his at-bats. It's been ugly.

There's every reason to believe that eventually, Holliday is going to be fine. He's too talented of a player to just never hit at the MLB level. It is, however, safe to have concerns about him performing at this level right now.

He should get more time than just nine games to prove himself, but if things continue to go this poorly, the Orioles will have a tough decision on their hands. They're a team trying to win right now, and they have several players at the MLB and minor league level able to fill in and do better than Holliday at second base.

It's wild to even be discussing this when thinking about the discourse surrounding Holliday just a couple of weeks ago. Maybe the Orioles keeping him down wasn't a mistake made by the Orioles. Perhaps their mistake was not keeping him down long enough.