Holliday bringing his High-A game
Shortstop prospect, 19, off to sizzling start with Aberdeen
In the opening game of High-A Aberdeen’s series last week at Winston-Salem, Orioles shortstop prospect Jackson Holliday came a single shy of a cycle. He hit a two-run home run in his first at-bat, a two-run double in his second and a two-run triple in his third, but a fourth never came. Rain in North Carolina ended the game after five innings.
“I was kind of bummed out for him,” Aberdeen hitting coach Zach Cole said. “He’s like, ‘It’s fine. I’ll do it again. We’ll be there again.’ ”
There’s little reason to doubt Holliday, ranked baseball’s No. 3 prospect by MLB Pipeline and No. 6 prospect by Baseball America. At 19 years old, the first overall pick in the 2022 draft is dominating High-A, a level many of his predecessors among top Orioles prospects have struggled.
A day after the rain-shortened game, he went 5-for-6 with two singles, a double and two triples, driving in five more runs. He ended the week batting .395 with a 1.229 OPS in 21 games for the IronBirds, with more walks than strikeouts. He joined Aberdeen after batting .392 with a 1.190 OPS in 13 games with Low-A Delmarva. Between the levels, he’s hit .394 and reached base in all 34 games this season, with a 1.214 OPS that leads the minors.
In 2021, Gunnar Henderson, who Holliday could soon follow as baseball’s overall top prospect, went 1-for-31 in his first 11 High-A games, though he also drew 12 walks. Last season, outfielder Colton Cowser and infielder Connor Norby, Baltimore’s first two selections in the 2021 draft, combined for a .248/.353/.417 batting line with Aberdeen; they have since slashed .299/.402/.525 in the upper minors. Between posting a 1.201 OPS last year with Delmarva and a 1.021 OPS so far this season with Double-A Bowie, left-handed slugger Heston Kjerstad, the No. 2 overall pick in 2020, had a .674 OPS as an IronBird last summer.
Cole, in his second year as Aberdeen’s hitting coach, said some around the game are beginning to consider Low-A to High-A the “biggest jump” in the minors, noting the pitchers at the latter level have more refined secondary pitches in terms of both shapes and locations. For the Orioles’ prospects, High-A is also a level they have reached amid their first full professional season, a challenging adjustment in itself.
Aberdeen’s Ripken Stadium, in particular, is a tough place to hit. A Baseball America analysis found that home runs were 16% less common in the IronBirds’ home games last season than their road games; in Winston-Salem — where Holliday went 13-for-21 with two home runs, three triples, three doubles, two steals and 14 RBIs to be named the South Atlantic League Player of the Week — home runs were 27% less common than elsewhere in the league.
“If you ask the players, they say it plays really big in the gaps, and you see it,” Cole said of Ripken Stadium. “To get one out there, you either have to hammer it or kind of sneak it over to the bullpens.”
That’s what made the home run Holliday hit May 9 in his home debut with the IronBirds
“a special one,” Cole said, adding Holliday hit it 106 mph with a launch angle of about 30 degrees — a “barrel” by Statcast standards — as the left-handed hitter cleared the wall in right-center at the deepest part of the park.
“It’s rare for a ball to leave in that spot for us,” Cole said. “I’ve seen a lot of those clank off the fence.”
Pulling the ball in the air has been an emphasis in Cole’s work with Holliday, with batting practice presenting him throwing angles and pitch shapes where it can be difficult to do that with designs of “going to extremes to really make him work through that process and build the solution in his mind of how his body needs to organize itself.” Cole said Holliday has fully bought into the challenging development approach that litters the organization, which has helped get other players to embrace it.
He also praised Holliday’s maturity, crediting his family for a trait that impressed the Orioles well before they made him last year’s first pick. Holliday is the son of seven-time All-Star Matt Holliday, and his uncle, grandfather and great-uncle have all been college coaches.
“He loves the challenge,” Cole said. “He believes in himself, super confident, but is humble about it in the same way. He’s not just trying to let everybody know he’s the best or anything.
“It’s almost like blending the perfect amount of all those together, and you get Jackson: confident, not letting everyone know, very humble, but loves to attack his work, knows he has more things to work and progress on, and goes about it diligently every day. I can’t harp on that enough, just how special that is to get all those tied together and, in a sense, perfectly.”
Holliday isn’t the only Baltimore minor leaguer coming off an impressive series. Each week, The Baltimore Sun will break down five of the top performers in the Orioles’ prospect ranks and hand out some superlatives for those who didn’t make that cut.
1. Double-A Bowie RHP Chayce McDermott
One of two pitchers the Orioles acquired in the three-team trade that sent Trey Mancini to the Houston Astros, McDermott pitched the first five innings of a combined no-hitter Friday. He worked around a pair of walks in both the first and fourth innings, lowering his ERA with Bowie to 2.62 after he had a 6.08 mark in six Double-A starts after the trade. Behind McDermott, Nolan Hoffman and Easton Lucas pitched two perfect innings each against Pittsburgh’s Double-A affiliate, combining for eight strikeouts.
2. High-A Aberdeen infielder Max Wagner
Holliday wasn’t the only 2022 draftee to have a big week for Aberdeen. Baltimore’s second-round selection, Wagner went 7-for15 with a pair of doubles and drew nine walks — at least one in each of the five games he appeared in — for a .680 on-base percentage. After hitting .150 with a .506 OPS in April, he’s batting .309 with a 1.080 OPS in May.
3. Triple-A Norfolk RHP Chris Vallimont
Vallimont is a rarity in Norfolk’s rotation in that he’s not on Baltimore’s 40-man roster, though he used to be. Claimed from Minnesota last year, he spent the rest of the season on the Orioles’ 40-man roster before being put on waivers and going unclaimed in January. After striking out seven in 5 ⅔ scoreless innings Wednesday, the 26-year-old has a 2.97 ERA over 33 ⅓ innings with Norfolk, striking out 39 and holding opponents to a .193 batting average.
4. Low-A Delmarva infielder Carter Young
Another infielder from the Orioles’ 2022 draft class, Young slashed .389/.522/.500 last week for the Shorebirds, walking five times against three strikeouts. Even with the big week, Young, who received a $1.325 million bonus as Baltimore’s 17th-round pick, is batting .186 with a .583 OPS for Delmarva, striking out in more than 30% of his plate appearances.
5. Double-A Bowie RHP Justin Armbruester
In 11 innings across two starts last week, Armbruester allowed one earned run and less than a base runner an inning. In his first outing, he took a shutout into the sixth before a two-out error preceded a home run, but he finished the frame to complete six innings for only the second time as a pro. He then allowed one run over five innings Sunday, leaving the 2021 12th-rounder’s ERA through eight starts at 1.58.
The top prospect not featured so far
With Colton Cowser not playing last week because of a left quad injury that landed him on the Triple-A injured list, this space belongs to left-hander DL Hall. Tuesday for Norfolk, he worked only three innings, part of the Orioles’ plan to build up his strength after he missed much of spring training with a back injury. In Hall’s lone major league outing this year, his fastball averaged 93.2 mph, 3 mph below how hard he typically threw during his stint with the Orioles in 2022.
International acquisition of the week
Working in relief Wednesday, 20-year-old right-hander Juan De Los Santos pitched five no-hit innings for Delmarva, striking out six while hitting two batters and walking another. A native of the Dominican Republic, De Los Santos was among the players the Orioles signed in early 2019 as the new front office looked to make use of what remained of the organization’s international bonus pool. In his second season with the Shorebirds, De Los Santos has a 5.86 ERA, though half of the earned runs he allowed came in one outing. In his other six, his ERA was 3.24.
Time to give a shout-out to …
Before signing with the Orioles, Holliday planned to play in college for his uncle, Josh, at Oklahoma State. He’s now teammates with a right-hander who did so. Jake Lyons, drafted out of OSU in the 22nd round of the 2019 draft, struck out eight over four innings of one-run ball Thursday for Aberdeen. After opening the year in the IronBirds’ rotation, the 24-yearold has worked in a bulk relief role his past four outings, with 27 strikeouts and one run allowed over 14 innings.
Also deserving of recognition here is Bowie first baseman TT Bowens, a 2020 undrafted free agent who slugged .722 last week for the Baysox.