No hits for Jackson Holliday, but Orioles second baseman makes Frederick fans happy in his Keys rehab assignment
For a brief moment anyway, Hudson Valley relief pitcher Chris Veach was the most reviled man inside Nymeo Field at Harry Grove Stadium.
With one out in the bottom of the seventh, Veach plunked rehabbing Orioles second baseman Jackson Holliday in the right leg with a 3-2 pitch Saturday night.
The 22-year-old Holliday, who is in Frederick on a new rehab assignment with the High-A Keys, shook it off pretty easily. And, as a loud chorus of boos rained down on Veach from the fans, Holliday trotted to first base.
It was the only time Holliday reached base in four at-bats and precisely the type of moment that he, the Keys and Orioles were hoping to avoid.
"It was good to see him get the full nine innings there," Keys manager Collin Woody said after Frederick's 4-1 victory over Hudson Valley. "It was a bit of a scary moment there. You never want a rehab guy to get hit, especially a big league rehab guy. But he was totally fine. Shook it off. He was totally fine."
Holliday is trying to make his way back to the major leagues after having right wrist surgery in February that caused him to miss spring training. He was not made available to the media by the Orioles before or after Saturday's game with the Keys.
After batting .167 with a .453 OPS in 11 games with Triple-A Norfolk, the Orioles shut down Holliday last Monday with what they described as "mild right wrist soreness."
His father, Matt, said on his podcast Thursday that Jackson was dealing with soreness on the opposite side of the wrist than the hamate bone that was operated on.
Matt Holliday , a seven-time All-Star who played his best seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals , said the opposite-side discomfort is common for hitters recovering from hamate surgery because the body tends to overcompensate.
"This is such a tricky injury," Matt said on the "Cardinal Territory" podcast. "He had the surgery and, you know, [the wrist] is such an integral part of hitting."
On Friday, it was announced the Orioles had reassigned Jackson Holliday to High-A Frederick, where he would play for the Keys Saturday and Sunday against Hudson Valley before reevaluating him.
Wearing No. 31 for the Keys as opposed to his big-league No. 7, Holliday took the field in Frederick to a loud ovation. His appearance drew a big crowd. The paid attendance was announced as 7,404, which was the Keys largest since June 2024, when they had "Star Wars Night" at the ballpark.
"We're lucky in our organization. We've got a lot of good dudes on our big-league team," said Woody, a former Keys player himself. "Jackson's definitely one of the better dudes. Like, he's such a good guy to have around the clubhouse for these young players and just enjoyable to be around. You can tell that he just wants to be one of the guys, no matter if it's a big-league clubhouse or an A-ball clubhouse."
Batting second in the Keys lineup behind the top prospect in the organization, outfielder Nate George, Holliday took the first pitch he saw from Hudson Valley starter Sean Paul Linan and sent a ground ball over to the first-base side.
It was fielded by Renegades first baseman Kyle West and flipped over to the covering Linan for an easy out.
In the top of the second, Holliday made his first and best defensive plays of the night, taking care of an easy ground out by Hudson Valley's Wilson Rodriguez and then flipping the ball with his glove to second base to start a slick 4-6-3 double play to end the half-inning.
Holliday came to bat again as part of a four-run second inning for the Keys and, after taking a couple of balls, flied out to right field to end the inning. Then, in the fourth, he hit another ball that carried all the way to the warning track in left before it was caught right in front of the wall.
"He hit a ball hard there, made a couple of plays on defense. So, it was good," Woody said.
In the Keys' 7-6 loss to the Renegades on Sunday, Holliday went 2-for-5 with a double, one RBI and one run scored.
Prior to Saturday's game, there was a long line of fans, many wearing a No. 7 Holliday Orioles jersey, waiting to get in when the gates opened at 5 p.m.
Among the first to enter were Brandy and Eric Milstred and their 8-year-old son, Brycen, from Taneytown.
They immediately raced down the first-base concourse to try and secure a place for a potential autograph near the new field entrance for the Keys.
"My son is obsessed with [Holliday]," Brandy said of Brycen.
When Brandy saw the Facebook announcement on Friday that Holliday would be rehabbing with the Keys this weekend, she rushed to try and buy tickets online only to find that the webpage had apparently crashed.
"I didn't care what I had to do. I was going to find a way to get [tickets]," she said.
The Milstreds patiently waited with a crowd of other autograph seekers as Holliday went through his onfield warm-up routine before the game. They were hoping he would come over to their area, and that Brycen may get lucky.
Sure enough, he did. Holliday came right over on his way to the dugout about 10 minutes before the game, and Brycen was one of the first to get an autograph.
Brandy said Holliday signed Brycen's favorite baseball card.
"He was crying," Brandy said. "I have pictures of him crying."
