BALTIMORE — Regardless of your feelings on the Orioles’ handling of top prospect Jackson Holliday, there’s a good chance you’ve felt right and wrong at different points over the last five weeks. From the perceived mismanaging of offseason expectations preceding him not making the Opening Day roster to Holliday being promoted to the majors after just 10 Triple-A games to open 2024 and being sent back to the minors after 10 games of dramatic struggles, the way general manager Mike Elias and the organization have handled the 20-year-old phenom has been weird to say the least. That’s not to suggest anyone’s doubting Holliday eventually reaching his full potential — remember how bad current AL Rookie of the Year favorite Colton Cowser looked last summer — or even making meaningful contributions later this season, but his first stint in the majors wasn’t working nor showing enough positive signs to delay the need to make tweaks at a lower level. A 2-for-34 start to his major league career didn’t tell the whole story as Holliday had struck out 18 times and walked only twice in 36 plate appearances. In contrast, he registered the same number of strikeouts as walks (138) over 727
