There was hope coming into the 2026 season that the Orioles would see Jackson Holliday take a significant step towards stardom. The former number one overall pick had shown growth in 2025, gaining crucial experience and looking more comfortable at the plate. It seemed he was ready to jump up a level. Instead, hand and wrist injuries nagged throughout the year and left a team that’s desperate to field a winner in 2027 keeping their options open at second base.

Holliday’s season was wrecked before it could even get started. He suffered a broken hamate bone in his right hand while taking live at-bats at the Orioles’ complex in Sarasota, Florida a week before camp officially opened. The timeline from there was to have surgery, which he did on February 12, follow the normal rehab path and get back into the Orioles lineup sometime in mid-April.

What happened next was a rehab that was paused on two occasions due to discomfort in the area. Holliday began playing minor league games on March 27, but stopped from April 12 to 18, and then again from April 21 until May 7. He was eventually cleared, allowing the area to calm down, and then continued on before making his season debut with the Orioles on May 19.

Those first nine games saw the type of production the O’s were targeting for Holliday. He hit .242/.333/.424 (.758 OPS) with two home runs, five walks, 10 strikeouts, and three stolen bases. He looked like a contender to sit atop the Orioles lineup in the near future.

Then came a June swoon in which he slashed .179/.253/.373 with two doubles, a triple, and three home runs. There was some pop, as evidenced by the six extra-base hits across 23 games, but it came with a lot of whiffs too. He struck out 23 times in 75 plate appearances while walking just seven times.

In July, however, Holliday looked like a brand new player. Maybe he had finally knocked off the rust that came with his stop-start rehab and made a star turn. Across 23 games in the month of July, Holliday hit .368/.500/.421. He had just three extra-base hits, all of which were doubles, but he also worked 16 walks and struck out only 11 times. These weren’t loud at-bats, but he looked like a guy that played within himself, took his walks, and was comfortable setting the stage for others in the order to provide the thump.

Unfortunately, all of that went out the window after that. From August 1 through the end of his season (a span of 40 games), Holliday hit .196/.224/.278 with seven doubles, two home runs, six walks, and 40 strikeouts while going 3-for-5 on stolen base attempts.

His season numbers crated from a .261/.367/.401 season slash line at the end of play on July 31 to just .229/.300/.340 when he came off the field for the final time. His season OPS+ wound up at just 82, 18% below league average. So much for taking the next step.

What made it worse was that Holliday couldn’t even go into the offseason healthy. He didn’t play again after September 14 due to a left wrist injury that was later described as a partial triangular fibrocartilage complex tear. It required surgery and came with a recovery period of about 10 weeks. That would put him as recovered from the injury sometime before the end of this calendar year, and the expectation is that he will be ready to participate fully in spring training.

The fact that Holliday had an injury to one hand/wrist prior to the year and ended the year with an injury to the other hand/wrist by the end of the season could be coincidental. It might also be related, an indication that he never felt 100% with the hamate injury and therefore compensated and put unusual stress on his opposite limb. Holliday semi-hinted at that possibility when it was announced that he was having surgery.

These injuries make any judgement of Holliday’s top line stats and underlying metrics difficult to analyze. Just about every one of his numbers was down in 2026 compared to 2025. He had less frequent hard contact, and even when he did barrel up a pitch it was coming off the bat far softer. His max exit velocity of 105.8 mph was nearly four mph slower than his max exit velocity in 2025 (109.6 mph).

At the same time, he continued to post good sprint speed on the bases. His average pace of 28.9 feet per second was a touch faster than in 2025 (28.6), and it put him in the 87th percentile of all MLB runners. So, this is not a player that is physically deteriorating at 22 years old. What’s more likely is that he’s a young player that is still learning and got slapped with some bad injury luck in what could have been a turning point season for him.

Now, it should be made clear that the injury alone does not absolve Holliday from his lack of growth. It may explain some of it, but the reality is that 2026 was his second full big league season, and to this point he looks nowhere near the franchise cornerstone that he was projected to be when selected first overall in 2022 or when he was dubbed the top prospect in all of baseball prior to his debut with the Orioles in ‘24.

Beyond the struggles at the plate, Holliday is also having a tough time proving his value elsewhere on the field. He was 8-for-11 on stolen base attempts, which is a good success rate, but the volume probably needs to be doubled (or more) to truly help the offense. In the field, he was better than in 2025 but continues to look uncomfortable, occasionally making mistakes on balls that he has plenty of athleticism to make. It’s an oddity that seems to have sprung up last year, because his metrics during his rookie campaign in 2024 were pretty solid.

Perhaps that is part of the reason that Orioles president of baseball operations Mike Elias discussed trading Holliday this past summer. It doesn’t sound like a deal was ever particularly close, but who knows. They would certainly be selling low. Moving on from Holliday would raise quite a few eyebrows, since he isn’t due to hit free agency until after the 2030 season.

The Orioles should be trying to win in 2027. Gunnar Henderson is going to be another year closer to free agency. Pete Alonso was terrific in his debut with Baltimore, but is marching towards the back half of his career. Hopefully Félix Bautista and Jordan Westburg will be on the field for most of 2027. Many factors are swelling to put pressure on the next season, whenever it actually happens, to be a competitive one. The team should strive for some stability at second base and some stability for Holliday himself.

Manager Craig Albernaz deployed Holliday at every spot in the order except for cleanup in 2026. He hit ninth most often (25 games, 23 starts), followed by eighth (22 games, 18 starts), and then first (17 games, 16 starts). His numbers were best at the very bottom of the order, where he hit .268/.329/.437. So, maybe they should just keep him there?

The 2027 season will bring a more settled situation at third base, with Westburg, Coby Mayo, and Christian Encarnacion-Strand all available to contribute either right at the start of the season or shortly thereafter. That could free up Blaze Alexander to sub in at second base more often, allowing manager Albernaz to put Holliday in more advantageous situations rather than pencilling him in the starting lineup everyday.

In general, the Orioles have to adjust their treatment of Holliday to match the player he has shown them to be. That is someone that can be serviceable, but is yet to show the upside of a bonafide big league regular on a team vying for the playoffs. Once he proves otherwise, his role on the team can be made to match.