Is Jackson Holliday the best baseball prospect we have ever seen?

History decides.

On Tuesday night, the Baltimore Orioles announced that Jackson Holliday, the #1 prospect in pro baseball, was being called up to the big club.

His reaction to this news was priceless.

His stats —at every level — are, frankly, amazing.

In his senior year of high school — in Stillwater, Oklahoma — Holliday had 89 hits in 40 games. He hit .685. He hit 17 home runs and had 79 RBI. In 40 games!!!

After being the #1 overall pick in the 2022 Major League Baseball draft, Holliday played at several levels of the minors. Here were his combined stats: 477 AB , 154 Hits, 113 Runs, 12 HRs, 51 XBH, 75 RBIs, 101 Walks, .323 AVG, .442 OBP, .499 SLG, .941 OPS.

He was voted minor league player of the year in 2023.

This year, he hit a home run in his first at-bat for the Orioles AAA affiliate.

So, yeah, the kid is pretty good. Did I mention he’s 20 years old? And that his dad is former major league slugger Matt Holliday?

The question then seems not whether Holliday will have success at the big league level. Rather the right question to ask is where Holliday will eventually rank when it comes to the best prospects ever — in terms of his output over the course of his career.

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How do you determine that? Well, first you need to define the universe of what you are talking about. For the purposes of this exercise, I am going to use this list of the #1 baseball prospects from every year since 1990.

That means that I will necessarily preclude phenoms like Jackie Robinson and Bob Feller — both of whom were tagged for stardom at a very young age and more than lived up to the hype. (Both are in Cooperstown.)

It also leaves out more modern players like Ken Griffey Jr. and Darryl Strawberry. (Griffey was — and is — my 2nd favorite player of all time. Who’s #1? Don Mattingly!)

So, there’s that.

One other thing before we get into the best baseball prospects ever. A look at the list makes clear that there are a whole lot of players who did NOT live up the the hype of their younger years.

For me, the name that stood out was Brien Taylor, the lefty pitcher who was Baseball America’s top prospect in 1992.

I grew up a Yankee fan and remember, distinctly, when the Yankees drafted Taylor. He seemed like the perfect package — a 6’3” fireballer. (Read this oral history of just how good Taylor was.)

But, while in the minors he severely injured his pitching arm in a fight (not on the field) and never really recovered. He kicked around in the minors for the next 8 years but never pitched in a big-league ballgame.

Taylor is, without question, the biggest bust among top MLB prospects in the modern era. (Todd Van Poppel is up there too.) But there’s also plenty of people on the list who were highly touted and had only decent-to-good careers.

Kris Bryant. Andrew Benintendi. Matt Wieters. Rick Ankiel. Cliff Floyd. You get the idea. All serviceable players. Even a few All-Star games between them. But not era-defining players.

Holliday seems to be seen by, well, almost everyone, as someone whose floor is a very good MLB player and whose ceiling is a great one.

So, to the question at hand: Who is the best baseball prospect ever?

Let’s run through the obvious candidates — briefly.

• Bryce Harper: From the time he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 2009 at age 16, Harper has been seen as a generational talent.

  

Harper was the #1 overall pick in the 2010 draft and made the majors in 2012 at the tender age of 19. He played in 139 games that year and hit .270 with 22 homeruns and 59 RBIs. He won the Rookie of the Year award in the National League.

In the 12 years since then, Harper has hit .281 with 309 homers and almost 900 RBIs. He has won the MVP award twice — in 2015 and 2021. He has been an All-Star 7 times.

• Chipper Jones: Jones was the #1 overall pick by the Atlanta Braves in 1990 draft. He came up to the majors briefly in 1993 (at the age of 21). But his first full season was 1995. He played 18 total years for the Braves and his stats are frankly eye-popping. He hit 468 homeruns — good for 35th of all time. He had 1,623 RBIs. And his lifetime batting average was .303. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018, with the tenth highest percentage ever.

• Alex Rodriguez: Arod was Baseball America’s #1 prospect in 1995. Two years before, he had been the #1 overall draft pick of the Seattle Mariners. His first full season in the majors was 1996 when at the age of 20, he hit an amazing .358. Over the next two decades, Arod racked up numbers that should make him one of the greatest players ever: 696 homeruns (5th best) and 2,086 RBIs (4th best). Hen also won 3 MVPs. But, Arod’s career was plagued by steroid allegations — and, after he retired, he admitted that he had used performance enhancing drugs. Arod is still not in the Hall of Fame.

• Joe Mauer: Mauer was the #1 overall pick of the Minnesota Twins in the 2001 draft — a rare catcher who could hit for average and power. Mauer came up to the majors for a short 35-game stint in 2004 (at the age of 21). Two years later, he won the AL batting title with an average of .347. It was one of three batting titles Mauer would win over his career. His best year was 2009 when he hit .365 with 28 homeruns and 96 RBIs. He won the AL MPV that year. For his career, Mauer hit .306 — and only struck out over 100 times once over 15 years. Earlier this year, Mauer was elected to Cooperstown on the 1st ballot — one of only three catchers ever to have that distinction. (Johnny Bench and Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez are the other two.)

• Shohei Ohtani: What is there left to say about Ohtani? As a batter, he hits for power and average from the left side. As a pitcher, he is one of the five best in baseball (when healthy). At 29 years old, he’s already won the Rookie of the Year award and two MVPs. He is the most unique player since Babe Ruth — and certainly the only one since Ruth who can pitch and hit at an all star level in the majors. Just take his 2023 season as an example. He hit .304 with 44 homeruns and 95 RBIs. On the mound, he started 23 games, struck out 167 and had an ERA just over 3. Like, what?

Ok, so now time to pick. Here’s my top 5:

1. Ohtani

2 Harper

3. Jones

4. Arod

5. Mauer

What’s yours? And who did I leave out?