The positives for Holliday start with the 17 home runs. He also swiped 17 bases, although he was caught stealing 11 times as part of the trial and error in developing a more aggressive approach on the basepaths<\/a>. Holliday also drew 56 walks, the second most on the Orioles, and he became one of six players in Baltimore\u2019s history to record 21 or more doubles at age 21 or younger.<\/p>\n Orioles second baseman Jackson Holliday connects with a pitch in the third inning against the Boston Red Sox on Aug. 25. (Ulysses Mu\u00f1oz\/The Banner)<\/p>\n Those marks, when standing alone, shine a positive light on what Holliday produced in 2025. The other side of the coin is not so bright, however.<\/p>\n Even with 17 home runs, Holliday\u2019s on-base-plus-slugging percentage in 149 games was just .690. He drew walks, but Holliday still struck out at an elevated clip, producing a team-high 140 of them. And much of the time, the contact Holliday made was weak. His average exit velocity of 88.8 mph ranked in the 30th percentile.<\/p>\n Holliday also struggled against fastballs, with a .220 average against four-seamers and a negative-8 run value (a Statcast metric that measures how much production a player creates at the plate based on various outcomes, such as hits and walks). <\/p>\n That is all before dissecting his defense at second base.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m excited to improve next year and learn how to stay consistent, and that\u2019s something that I\u2019ll be thinking about a lot in the offseason, how I can perform the entire year opposed to a month here and there,\u201d Holliday said. <\/p>\n So, again, he summarized his season justly: \u201cNot bad, but not great.\u201d<\/p>\n His defensive work at second base leans more heavily on the \u201cnot great\u201d side of the spectrum, but he showed improvement there as well. Mansolino said that by the end of the season, he considered Holliday a top-10 double-play-turning infielder. The most obvious hitch in his game came when attempting to backhand balls. <\/p>\n When moving to his right, up the middle of the diamond, Holliday graded out poorly. He finished with a negative-12 outs above average rating, per Statcast, on balls to his right. That is the lowest of any qualified second baseman in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n Overall, Holliday finished with negative-8 outs above average on all plays, which finished third worst.<\/p>\n \u201cOh yeah, still an area of focus, especially the backhand,\u201d Holliday said.<\/p>\n Holliday recalled a conversation with former Oriole Brian Roberts about the transition from shortstop to second base. Roberts told Holliday that the backhand play up the middle gave him a \u201chard time\u201d in his first full year of playing second in the big leagues.<\/p>\n \u201cThat gave me some good encouragement, because it is different from playing shortstop,\u201d Holliday said. \u201cBut it\u2019s been good to learn, play a whole year over there, play a whole year with Gunn [Gunnar Henderson], getting comfortable and just really building for next year.\u201d<\/p>\n Shortly after Brandon Hyde was fired as manager in May<\/a>, Mansolino vowed to emphasize Holliday\u2019s development in what was already appearing to be a lost season. Gone were the platoon matchups; Holliday played just about every day, moving into the leadoff spot<\/a> with the backing that a poor night wouldn\u2019t lead to the bench.<\/p>\n In the long run, that may well prove to be the sink-or-swim experience necessary for Holliday to flourish \u2014 and maybe then he\u2019ll grade himself out better than a C.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve asked of this kid this year has been a lot, and I do feel like he\u2019s answered in a lot of ways,\u201d Mansolino said. \u201cThe stress on this season in particular, how it\u2019s been here in Baltimore this year and just not meeting expectations as a team, the pressure and stress and everything and having to play every day and be a focal point, lead off and be in the middle of the field every single day \u2014 it\u2019s a big ask for a 21-year-old kid.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jackson Holliday isn\u2019t far removed from receiving a report card, so when he was asked to turn the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,111,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-262940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-politics","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/VIABWQSFXZFAJKQ5VMHJNDIZCE.jpg\")
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