Hit, run, wallop: Holliday's skill on display for Bowie

Jackson Holliday put up his best game yet at Double-A Bowie on Saturday.

The shortstop went 4-for-5 with a home run and a pair of infield singles in a 9-4 win over Portland -- all as the youngest player in the Eastern League at 19 years old.

It's just the latest example of baseball's No. 1 prospect showing off all five of his above-average tools, which is something the Orioles, and baseball fans in general, will be used to soon enough.

"It's more of the same. I'm really impressed with him," Baysox manager Kyle Moore said. "The guy's just got all the tools. Tonight, the speed tool showed more than others. But he made a great defensive play last night. He made a really nice adjustment on a really hard-hit ball at him tonight defensively. It's fun to watch him, and it's fun to watch his different tools play on any given night. Sometimes it's the power, where he did homer tonight. And then other times where he legs out a single with his speed.

"He's got a little bit of everything."

Holliday has been lighting up the Eastern League since his promotion in mid-July, but his latest outing took things to another level. It was enough to raise his Double-A OPS from an already impressive .888 to 1.014 in one fell swoop.

The first overall pick in the 2022 Draft has hits in 10 of his 12 games with Bowie, and seven of those are multihit games.

Holliday started Saturday's game by taking a fastball the other way for a single before turning on an inside pitch in the fourth inning and launching it well over the right-field wall for his second roundtripper for Bowie. When Portland no longer attacked him inside, he capitalized on pitches over the plate by putting them in play and using his speed to rush defenders, who were not able to come up with the ball cleanly.

The tools have not necessarily been a surprise for Moore, given Holliday's status as a prep star and the fact that his father, Matt, was a seven-time All-Star. But the manager has been impressed by how easily the shortstop catches and throws the ball -- especially at his age -- and how unusually well he slows down the game.

Production is always welcomed, but Moore feel like one of his biggest tasks in Double-A is to teach players how to prepare from 2 p.m. to game time. And he's already seen a change into cool, calm, collected preparation since he first met Holliday in Spring Training.

The Orioles have one of the best young cores in baseball -- which includes multiple former No. 1 overall talents, in addition to their eight current Top 100 prospects per MLB Pipeline, which leads all clubs -- and Moore has had a part in almost all of their developments. It's only been a few weeks, but Moore can attest to Holliday being on track toward becoming the next complete player to arrive in Baltimore.

"I've been fortunate enough to coach a lot of No. 1 prospects like Adley [Rutschman], Grayson [Rodriguez], Gunnar [Henderson]," Moore said. "They all share one thing: They all have an enormous amount of charisma that's real. It's not fake, and it's not generated, they don't have to try. They have this real charismatic leadership character to them. I don't really know what our philosophy is on drafting players like that, but I know we've knocked it out of the park because everyone we've drafted high, or drafted period, has outstanding character."