Will Jackson Holliday Stay in AAA ALL Year?

2024 was supposed to be the year that Baltimore Orioles top prospect Jackson Holliday broke out. Coming into the season ranked the consensus #1 overall prospect in baseball, and after a solid spring training,Jackson Holliday found himself in the big leagues a month into the season, at just 19 years old. Everything was looking up for Holliday, and the fan base was HYPED. Adding the #1 overall prospect to the American Leagues best team from a year ago, the expectations were SKY high. It wasn’t long until things trended back downward, however. After going just 2 for 34 at the plate to begin his major league career, Jackson Holliday got sent back to Triple-A after just two weeks in the majors. While this didn’t mean he was a career bust, it did deflate some of the hopes of the Orioles fans who expected him to come up to the bigs and dominate. This was the games top prospect, after all. What did this mean for his 2024 season, and would we see him again?
While things seemed rough at the time of his demotion, Jackson Holliday NOW going on the injured list with elbow inflammation seems to be a season-low, and it comes at a time where the future superstar was finally starting to get his feet back under him in AAA, and put up some better stats more consistently over the past few weeks. With this being an elbow injury, some fans are wondering if maybe there is something more serious going on here. Anytime you hear something about an elbow, it can be pretty concerning. Along with that concern, the question is raised; does this injury officially CLOSE THE DOOR on Jackson Holliday’s hopes of returning to the major leagues in 2024?
To answer this question, its important to know the severity of the injury. And we do have GOOD news on that front, at least from what the Orioles are telling us: According to Orioles General manager Mike Elias, initial tests indicated that Holliday's arm is ONLY showing inflammation and that right now, and that it doesnt appear that there is any LIGAMENT damage, and that this is looking like a MINOR injury that they let heal over the coming weeks with rest. That is FANTASTIC news for Orioles fans, or for anyone who doesn’t cheer on injuries, really. These types of injuries happen from time to time, and the vast majority of the time, they can be healed with rest over a number of weeks.
Anytime we see these elbow injuries, though, there is still the possibility that it doesnt respond as well as hoped to rest, and more action needs to be taken. It doesn’t sound like that is a concern here for the Orioles, but ultimately, time will tell how it all shakes out with Jackson Holliday.
Luckily, the initial tests have gone well, and even in a potential worst-case scenario, position players will generally bounce back from elbow injuries quicker than pitchers do, as you don’t have that constant stress on their arms. Again, the hope is that with a few weeks off, the elbow starts to feel better, the inflammation goes down, and Holliday can get back on the field here in the next month or so, and get back to performing at a high level. As resilient as Holliday is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s able to do just that.
With all of this being said, IF this injury isn’t worse than the Orioles are telling us, and Jackson Holliday is able to come back from this within a few weeks, or even a month, I don’t feel that the door is COMPLETELY slammed on Jackson Holliday, but it certainly IS starting to slowly creep closer to closed; its like when the current catches a door and pulls it closed; theres still time to recover and keep it from closing, but if this injury lasts much longer than a month, then Holliday might just frankly run out of time. It’s not like once he’s back to playing in games, he’s gonna spawn in the big leagues. We MIGHT expect to see him start at a level LOWER than AAA for a few rehab games, before returning to AAA to try and get that consistency back. From that point, the Orioles are still going to want to see Jackson prove that he BELONGS back in the big leagues, which takes time. If he doesn’t come back relatively quickly from this injury, and perform very well in his return to action, he can pretty much forget about the major leagues in 2024. I hope that’s not the case, but as the weeks go on, the thought of Jackson staying in the minors all year becomes more of a reality. And thats not to beat up on the kid; its not his fault he got injured, right? And he’s still gonna go on to have a great career in the bigs, I don’t question that either. But his chances of making it back up in 2024 are truthfully slipping, to answer the title of todays video.
2024 hasn’t gone as planned for Jackson Holliday. But the good news is, it isn’t over yet. Jackson was starting to find his groove in AAA before his injury, and hopefully, after a few weeks off, he can pick back up where he left off, and MAYBE, just MAYBE, find himself back in the big leagues, before seasons end.