He can only go up from here, we guess.

Current Atlanta Braves minor leaguer David Fletcher has quite a lot of experience in MLB as an ultra utilityman. He’s played all over the diamond, able to boast that he’s played every position defensively in the big leagues over 539 career games except for pitcher, catcher and first base.

And now he can add striking out the top prospect in baseball, Jackson Holliday, to his resumé.

On Wednesday night, the Braves’ Triple-A affiliate, the Gwinnett Stripers, were taking on the Orioles affiliate, the Norfolk Tides, where Holliday is playing after his big-league debut went extremely poorly. Meanwhile, Fletcher was making the first start of his career as a pitcher after having been used recently as a knuckleballer by the Stripers.

Holliday is probably wishing that wasn’t the case in hindsight after Fletcher made the 20-year-old Orioles prospect’s recent struggles look that much worse.

Jackson Holliday whiffs hard against noted veteran infielder David Fletcher

In the bottom of the third inning, Fletcher struck out Holliday with a nasty knuckler that completely buckled the young top prospect and had him swinging and missing wildly. Not the best look for him when facing a utility infielder on the mound.

To be fair to Holliday, we should mention a few things. First, Fletcher was actually quite good in the first start of his professional baseball career, especially doing so in Triple-A against a loaded Orioles farm system. He pitched five innings, allowed just three hits, one walk and two runs while striking out six total batters. Holliday, meanwhile, went 2-for-4 on the night.

At the same time, the hits really just seem to keep coming hard for Holliday since his big call-up to Baltimore. In the majors for his brief stint, he slashed an abysmal .059/.111/.170 before getting sent back down to Norfolk. Back down in Triple-A, though, he hasn’t been anything remotely close to what we saw from his dominant start to the 2024 season in the minors.

Comparing his May to what he did in April, his OPS is down more than 140 points for the Tides while his average has fallen all the way to .236 over the past month entering Wednesday night’s game. That’s not even close to what’s expected from the former No. 1 overall pick, especially in an organization where it seems as if all of the other high-end prospects of recent years have been living up to the billing and more.

But again, Holliday is only 20 years old. There’s a good chance he’s trying to make adjustments after seeing his shortcomings at the big-league level. Even then, however, it doesn’t make his recent struggles any more palatable. Or the strikeout to a veteran MLB infielder less embarrassing.