When I began writing this article I started with looking at who were some of the biggest risers/fallers in our midseason ranks and I saw that Jackson Holliday had fallen from our 4th 2B in our preseason rankings to our 11th 2B in our recent update. I was the lowest on Holliday in our internal rankings, and when I went back to check where we had him preseason I was surprised to see him ranked that high. A gap that wide usually comes down to a difference in information or bias within myself or the market.

Since a weakness of mine is that I tend to over-rely upon projection modeling in fantasy baseball, that means that there are often skills changes or playing time adjustments that have shifted and projection models are usually designed to regress towards the mean.

So what’s happened to Holliday this year?

During spring training and right after our team finalized our preseason 2B dyno rankings Holliday needed to go under the knife for Hamate surgery. This specific injury is caused by repeated vibrations from the bat on the hand and causing a broken bone in the hand, specifically the bone that’s resting against the knob of the bat when a player takes their swing. The surgery he underwent was to remove the bone and this type of surgery often zaps power in the short term and then eventually becomes a non-factor. Since returning from the hamate surgery Holliday has managed to hit for more power, lift the ball more, and walk more than pre-injury.

This season Holliday has seen his barrel rate nearly double from 7.8% in 2025 to 14.3% this year and his hard hit rate has climbed back up to 44.9% after dipping to 40.8% last year. In addition to hitting the ball harder Holliday is lifting the ball in the air more. He’s dropped the ground ball rate by 17.2% and increased the fly ball rate by 15.9%. The combination of hitting the ball harder and in the air more is a difficult combination to do simultaneously which makes me believe that this power surge is sustainable.

So with this new approach what might be a reasonable projection for Holliday? At the time of writing Holliday has hit four HRs in 89 PA’s, which converts to a 0.0449 HR/PA pace. If we take this pace and extrapolate it over 649 plate appearances like Holliday had in 2025, this number ends up as 29.17 home runs. If we were to lower his playing time component to be 600 PA’s then he would be on pace for 26.94 home runs over a full season. With this approach could we project Holliday to be an annual 20-25 HR hitter who might have a season or two where he might even reach the 30 HR mark? With these changes there’s absolutely a world in which this could happen.

What does the playing time aspect look like?

According to the Fangraphs Roster Resource, Holliday is currently batting eighth in the order and he’s being used mostly in a strong side platoon. The player on the short side of the platoon is Jeremiah Jackson, who has been awesome this season and can move around defensively which can open up more playtime for Holliday. A good hitter will force their teams to find a way to create more playtime for them and Holliday is good enough to do that.

In addition to more games played, the other way Holliday could increase his number of plate appearances is through batting higher in the order. On average, a player gains roughly 15-20 extra plate appearances per season for each spot higher they bat in the order. That being said this is not perfectly uniform because it tends to be a bit larger near the bottom of the order.

So who is batting ahead of Holliday right now? Leody Taveras is currently regularly batting seventh for the Birds. He is on a $2M contract and was DFA’d twice last year which means he’s not blocking Holliday. The sixth spot in the batting order is the Colton Cowser / Tyler O’Neill platoon. Cowser, the strong side of the platoon has a career 31.6% strikeout rate and the most homers and stolen bases he has gotten in a season is 24 and 14 respectively. If we’re projecting that Holliday can do this on an annual basis then there’s no reason Holliday should be batting behind Cowser. As for the short side of the platoon, O’Neill is hitting below the Mendoza line, not hitting for any power, and providing bad defense. His bat speed has dropped each of the last two years and his barrel rate (the rate at which the baseball is hit with an ideal exit velocity and launch angle) is one about third of what it was last year so while there could be some regression coming if he starts barreling the ball a little more it likely will not return to what it once was.

While Taveras and the platoon are two clear lineup jumps Holliday should make, Coby Mayo’s situation batting sixth is a little more complicated. Mayo has had an OPS above 1.000 against lefties and has been not good against righties. He’s currently being used in the DH role, but the Orioles will need to create playtime for Adley Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle when they return. Mayo could see his playtime change into a short side platoon, but with a strikeout rate around 33% there’s also a chance when Adley returns from the IL they send him down to AAA to work on hitting righties and the plate discipline since he still has one minor league option remaining.

If Holliday rises by two spots in the batting order he will likely see an additional 30-40 plate appearances over the course of a full season. If we take the lower end outcome of 30 plate appearances times the 0.0449 HR/PA rate this season he is on pace for this season then this would provide an additional 1.35 home runs per season coming from more opportunities. But it is not just homers as well. Additional plate appearances should give a similar uptick in categories like stolen bases, runs and RBI as well.

What does this all mean?

Jackson Holliday is the definition of player fatigue in fantasy baseball. Even if he never fully meets the expectations we place on a first round selection, Holliday is still just 22 years old. If he has the potential to put up 25 HR / 15 SB seasons annually, this is what a top five fantasy second baseman could look like. Buying low on a young player like Holliday lets you acquire that upside at a discount before the market corrects itself.