Orioles pull the plug on Jackson Holliday project after poor major league start

The Baltimore Orioles finally made the move MLB fans had been waiting for, promoting their top prospect and the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball, Jackson Holliday, to the major leagues. It should've happened earlier, but Mike Elias finally made the move.

It felt like Holliday had earned it last season when he dominated the minor leagues. It felt as if he had earned it after Spring Training when he performed at a high level in big league camp. It felt as if he had earned in early on this season, and that's when it finally happened.

The Orioles getting a player of Holliday's caliber on top of the roster they already had seemed unfair. Of all of the young prospects they had in their system, Holliday was seen as the best one. Unfortunately, things don't always work out as planned. The Holliday experiment did not go well from the very start.

Orioles already pull the plug on Jackson Holliday experiment after slow start

Holliday, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 MLB Draft, had a 1.077 OPS in his 10 games for AAA Norfolk this season before getting promoted to the majors. He appeared to be more than ready to join the show and dominate, but that simply did not happen. In fact, it looked like he didn't belong.

The 20-year-old had just two hits in 34 at-bats (.059 BA) and did not record a single extra-base hit in his ten games with the Orioles. He drew two walks and scored five runs but he struck out a whopping 18 times. Yes, Holliday fanned in 50% of his plate appearances. He struck out at least once in every game he appeared in.

62.5% of the few balls he put in play were on the ground. His average exit velocity was just 87.3 mph. In other words, he was either striking out or hitting soft ground balls. It's really hard to succeed that way.

With Holliday looking overmatched at the MLB level, the Orioles opted to send him down to the minors on Friday.

Ten games is an extremely small sample size and an argument could be made that Holliday should've gotten more time to snap out of his slump, but the Orioles did not want this to spiral completely out of control. Plus, this is a team trying to win right now. Holliday looking as bad as he did at the dish certainly wasn't helping them do that.

The hope here is that Holliday goes back down to the minors and dominates. We know he can hit at that level, but it's clear that he has things he needs to work on before coming back. And yes, he will be back. He's too talented of a player to not be back. Hopefully, he can put his early career struggles behind him and show why he was considered the best prospect in the sport.