Baltimore Orioles Provide a Game-Changing Update on Baseball's Top Prospect

Baltimore Orioles' farmhand and baseball's No. 1 overall prospect Jackson Holliday will have a chance to make the Opening Day roster in 2024, per team officials.

Though the Baltimore Orioles were swept away in the American League Division Series this season, optimism is very high for the organization.

Armed with one of the youngest cores in all of baseball, the O's won the vaunted the American League East this year and won an AL-best 101 games.

And they could get even scarier heading into 2024 in the form of Jackson Holliday, the No. 1 overall prospect in baseball. 

Per Danielle Allentuck of BaltimoreBanner.com:

Jackson Holliday will be in major league camp with a chance to make the team, Elias said.

Jackson Holliday will be in major league camp with a chance to make the team, Elias said.

— Danielle Allentuck (@d_allentuck) October 12, 2023

The 19-year-old Holliday was the No. 1 pick in the 2022 MLB draft and vaulted through the O's system in 2023, playing for four different levels.

Holliday hit .323 this year, finishing the year at Triple-A. He hit 12 home runs, drove in 75 runs and also stole 24 bases.

The following comes from his MLB.com prospect profile:

The combination of nature and nurture certainly come into play, with growing up around the game clearly helping Holliday’s overall skillset. He has an extremely advanced approach at the plate, and he showed it off by walking more than twice as much as he struck out during his debut last summer. He has a simple left-handed stroke he got back to after his swing got a little long last summer, allowing him make more hard contact than ever, with plenty of power coming organically from his swing.

With strength he added before his senior year, and with more to come, Holliday has also gotten faster and is a consistently plus runner. There’s an up arrow next to his arm strength as well and that, along with his improved quickness, means he should be able to play shortstop for a long time.

His father, Matt, played 15 years in the big leagues with the Colorado Rockies, St. Louis Cardinals, Oakland Athletics, and New York Yankees. He spent part of eight years in St. Louis, six with Colorado, one with New York and part of one with Oakland. He was a seven-time All-Star selection, received MVP votes in eight different seasons and finished fifth in the 2004 National League Rookie of the Year voting.

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