It’s hard to keep a mediocre fourth outfielder down
Good news for all of the people who were clamoring for the Orioles to demote Jackson Holliday after all of ten MLB games and bad news for everybody else: The O’s actually went and did it. In a surprise move on Friday afternoon, the team optioned the struggling top prospect back to Triple-A Norfolk.
Along with Holliday being sent to the minors, there was another move. Forgive my speaking in meme, but somehow, Ryan McKenna returned. The team selected McKenna’s contract from Triple-A Norfolk as a corresponding move. Also, catcher David Bañuelos was once again designated for assignment. This was necessitated since McKenna was removed from the 40-man previously. To call him up again, a spot had to be created.
The unfortunate reality for me and for everyone else who got excited for Holliday’s callup is that there’s not much in his results at the plate to recommend his remaining at the MLB level. He has two hits in 34 at-bats and has struck out in 50% of his plate appearances.
I wanted better! Even the .639 OPS of Milwaukee’s 20-year-old Jackson (Chourio) would have at least felt like something to build on. San Diego’s 20-year-old Jackson (Merrill) at a .787 OPS has even better results that I’d love to see from Holliday. That’s not what we got. He’s made some solid contact here and there but it’s been a lot of not swinging at pitches that are right on the outside corner of the plate (sometimes outside the plate entirely but still called strikes) and also a good amount of swinging and missing at fastballs in the strike zone.
In a couple of recent games, MASN analyst Ben McDonald pointed to Holliday having some difficulty getting the timing right on big league fastballs, which he thought might be related to a high leg kick. There was no need to smooth this out in the minors because Holliday kept getting results. MLB is a different beast.
It’s not hard to notice a parallel with what happened a year ago with Grayson Rodriguez. At the start of spring training 2023, it was exciting to think about Rodriguez making it onto the team. His spring results weren’t great and the team ended up optioning him, then reversing course and bringing him back before long into the season. Rodriguez struggled a lot (with more of a chance to fail) and was optioned to the minors with some knowledge of what to focus on.
That worked out pretty well in the second half of last season, and other than Rodriguez’s most recent start it’s looked like that has been carrying over into this season as well. Now it’s up to Holliday to do whatever needs to be done to get him over the hump against big league pitchers. He won’t be seeing as good a quality of pitches, or as good of an ability to locate those pitches, against Triple-A competition, but if the speculated mechanical adjustment is what needs to be made, the place to work on that is a place where the pressure is much lower and where the results don’t directly affect the record of the Orioles.
We’ll have to see how the Orioles decide to shuffle the lineup from here. They could move Jordan Westburg mostly to second base and have former Gold Glove winner Ramón Urías play third, or they could plug in either Urías or Jorge Mateo at second base.
McKenna’s presence seems to suggest that the Orioles either aren’t excited about the idea of Colton Cowser as a backup center field option or aren’t excited about Heston Kjerstad playing in the outfield generally. Maybe both! To be entirely fair to McKenna, he was perfectly fine in a reserve outfield role a year ago, posting a .677 OPS. He’s just not one of the prospects who’s been exciting us for years.
The Orioles outfield mix will change again soon, assuming Austin Hays has as short of a stay on the injured list as the initial comments suggested he would. McKenna probably makes more sense as a fourth outfielder than Kjerstad, not that this is any fun for those who want to see Kjerstad hitting dingers in an Orioles uniform rather than continuing to rack them up in Triple-A.