A few facts and opinions about prospects and the O's playoff chances

Today let’s throw out a few more facts about the Orioles and drop in an opinion or two to discuss them. Here we go.

Fact: Juan Soto made the majors after just 122 games on the farm and Jackson Holliday has played 145 minor league games through the 2023 season.

Fact and opinions: It’s true, and Baseball America’s JJ Cooper made that point this week when discussing if Holliday could start the 2024 season on the O’s roster. “Juan Soto was way less experienced when he stepped into the Nationals lineup than Jackson Holliday is right now," Cooper said.

First point here is that just because the great Soto did it doesn’t mean anyone can. But Holliday is not just anyone. This week he became the third Oriole in three years to be ranked No. 1 in the preseason Baseball America top 100 list after Adley Rutschman in 2022 and Gunnar Henderson last year.

But Cooper, as he usually does, makes a very good point.

Soto was an international signing at age 16, and over parts of three seasons in the minors played 122 games and got 453 at-bats. He was called up in May 2018 after playing a grand total of eight Double-A games and zero at Triple-A. Holliday, after two seasons on the farm, has played 145 games, getting 541 at-bats. He has played 36 games at Double-A and 22 (counting the playoffs) at Triple-A.

By way of another comparison, Jordan Westburg has played 77 games at Double-A and 158 at Triple-A. That is a big difference in high minors experience from Holliday, but the special ones sometimes can make the leap. During that 2018 season, Soto produced a .923 OPS in 116 games in the majors. After his first 17 big league games he had a batting line of .352/.444/.593/1.037.

Not saying Holliday will be as good as Soto, but just that they are both special talents that showed it at a young age. Soto obviously had the maturity back then to make the leap with such little experience on the farm, and Holliday can probably do it too. We’re going to find out in Sarasota this spring, and tracking the kid’s play and progress will be one of the most interesting aspects of camp in Florida.  

Fact: The Orioles this week became the first team ever to have three No. 1-ranked players over three straight years in the Baseball America top 100 rankings.

Opinion: This is a remarkable achievement. And if anyone discounts it even for a second, the first two – Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson – are already producing .800 OPSs in the big league lineup batting in key parts of the order. So Jackson Holliday is on deck.

It was also quite notable and a bit stunning to realize that in the 35-year history of the Baseball America list that began in 1990, 13 teams have never had a No. 1 player on the preseason poll. There are 21 major league teams that never had three players get to No. 1 at any point in time. So a remarkable run by the Orioles, and with 19-year-old catcher Samuel Basallo having a shot to get to No. 1 next year. After all, he starts the calendar year at No. 10, and Holliday started last year at No. 15.

This is an amazing era for the O’s in the minors. Their drafting and developing of young talent, in addition to their gains in the international market, have led them to the top of farm system rankings among all 30 teams. Their prospect rankings must make most teams jealous a bit.

From 1990-2020 in this poll, the O’s had five top 100 players just one time, and that was in 2008. Here are their results over the last four years:

2021 – 5
2022 – 5
2023 – 8
2024 – 6

Here's hoping Birdland appreciates how special this is for the organization. And those numbers could help keep the Orioles a playoff contender for years to come.

Fact: Per the website SportsBetting.ag, the Orioles have a better-than-not chance to make the 2024 playoffs. A yes vote that they make it has -170 odds right now, and a no vote that they miss is at +140.  This implies a 63 percent chance the Orioles will make the playoffs.

Opinion: A sports betting site won’t have anything to say about the Orioles making the playoffs or not. The team on the field will, and I feel confident they make it this coming season. And 63 percent sounds low to me.

Fact: It was 11 years ago yesterday that Orioles manager Earl Weaver died. He was a Hall of Fame manager and is beloved in Baltimore. He may have not been very tall, but he was larger than life for O's fans. He might not have been a fan of the video replay system in the current game, which eliminates most arguments between managers and umpires. Weaver was a legend when it came to those.

Opinion: He was about the best manager I ever saw in a dugout. In his day he was every bit as important to most of us as the great players alongside him. He led the O's to a World Series win in 1970. 

His career winning percentage of .583 ranked sixth among managers with at least 1,000 wins at the time of his retirement.

Weaver was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1996.

In was for that induction ceremony back in '96 that three former classmates from Towson State University trekked north to the village of Cooperstown, N.Y. There, about five minutes after they arrived in town three days before the ceremony, they ran into Earl and Marianna Weaver in the bar at the Otsega hotel. Years later they have this picture to prove it.