Jeremiah Jackson Is Getting His Hacks In

Only an act of science could get Jeremiah Jackson to take a walk.

Jackson entered Sunday with 65 plate appearances in 2026. He’d picked up 19 hits, including five homers and a double. He’d also struck out 17 times, grounded into two double plays, lined a sacrifice fly, and taken a wayward breaking ball off his back toe. He’d worked through pretty much every standard outcome for a plate appearance to begin the new season — but he hadn’t drawn a walk. In fact, Jackson entered Sunday as the batter with the most plate appearances in the majors to have not recorded a base on balls.

That was initially the case again Sunday as the Orioles wrapped up their series in Cleveland. Jackson struck out in the second inning, hit a sharp line drive single in the fourth, and reached on an error in the fifth.

Then he stepped to the plate to lead off the eighth. On the mound was nasty lefty Erik Sabrowski, fresh out of the Guardians bullpen. Sabrowski started him with a big curveball in the dirt. Jackson laid off for ball one. Sabrowski pumped his signature fastball, but it ran too far inside for ball two. Sabrowski tried to skim the other side of the plate, but missed too high for ball three.

Then it happened. Sabrowski threw another fastball, this time over the center of the plate. But he again missed too high — way too high — for ball four. Jackson had drawn his first walk of 2026.

Except, he hadn’t. Just as Jackson was prepared to set his bat down, the umpire called strike. Jackson paused, tapped his head, and proceeded with setting down his bat and removing his equipment, with a curious eye toward the video board. In zoomed the animated ball, revealing that the pitch was indeed way up and out of the zone for ball four. Jackson walked to first.

A Brief Tangent on ABS Challenges

This is actually the pitch that justifies the challenge system in my mind. In general, I’m not a huge fan of the challenge system. I think it’s kind of goofy for the league to make “the calls aren’t correct” a feature of the game, rather than just fixing the calls. It’s a bit tedious to make Jackson go through that whole process needlessly, assuming the goal is to improve accuracy on balls and strikes.

But I am pleased the call was ultimately made correct. Umpires for years have shown a very human tendency to “even up” lopsided counts — expanding the zone in 3-0 counts, shrinking the zone in 0-2 counts. Here we can see the called ball rate on pitches out of the zone in all counts versus 3-0 counts:

This bias has slowly corrected itself over the years as umpires have improved their total accuracy. What’s interesting is that, so far in 2026, these calls appear slightly more common. The table above shows only non-challenged pitches. Through Sunday, there have been 11 additional 3-0 takes on pitches out of the zone that were challenged: eight were (incorrectly) called strikes challenged by the batter, and three were (correctly) called balls challenged by the catcher. This means the true correct call rate by human umpires on 3-0 pitches out of the zone was 84.3%, bringing the difference relative to all counts to 10.7 percentage points — the largest since 2016. After challenges, the correct call rate is 86.1%, which looks more in line with recent seasons.

Now, if we were to look at this other way — called balls on pitches in the zone in 0-2 counts — the challenge system does seem to be doing quite a bit to eliminate bias, so I think it’s working overall. But this isn’t a post about ABS. Let’s move on.

Back To Live Jackson

Anyways…

That first walk, science or not, raised Jackson’s wRC+ to 146 through his first 69 plate appearances of 2026. That’s impressive. That’s surprising. That’s… probably not likely to continue (he’s already down to 136 after Tuesday’s game, in which he drew his second walk of the season), but it’s a great sign for the Orioles nonetheless.

Jackson doesn’t walk much because he’s uber aggressive. He’s swung at 61.4% of pitches so far in 2026, which is the second-highest rate among qualified batters. He doesn’t exactly discriminate, either. Few batters swing more in or out of the zone. In fact, Jackson ranks in the bottom 5% of the majors by SEAGER (a plate discipline metric created by Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus). He’s worked a three-ball count in just six plate appearances this year. Walks simply aren’t part of his game.

What’s interesting about Jackson is that he doesn’t have the contact tools you might expect from a free swinger. He whiffs quite a bit (30.6% in 2026), so he’s not really in the same bucket as Jacob Wilson. And he doesn’t hit the ball particularly hard (35.2%), so he’s not in the Jo Adell bucket, either.

No, Jackson is somewhere in the middle. He’s struck out at a 23.1% clip so far in 2026, about average. And he’s still produced a solid .430 xwOBACON despite his modest exit velocity. He has a flat, level, quick swing capable of squaring up the ball just about anywhere a pitch is thrown. We can see that in his launch angle distribution:

I love this distribution for him. Again, he doesn’t hit the ball hard enough to swing for the fences every time. Instead, he aims low, squaring up tons of high grounders and low line drives. He rarely goes above 32 degrees of launch, which is smart, because those batted balls are effectively the same as a strikeout for someone without top-tier exit velocity. His popup rate is just 1.9%. This is a standard hit for Jackson:

When Jackson does elevate, it’s highly likely to be to the pull side — nearly half of his elevated contact so far is traveling toward the shallowest part of the park. So while I doubt he’ll continue on his pace of 30-plus homers, it isn’t too surprising that he’s already hit five.

I love this homer especially. Eduardo Rodriguez missed over the plate with a middle-middle fastball, and Jackson took his usual aggressive hack, beaming it 110.4 mph at 18 degrees to left:

In other words, there does seem to be something more going for Jackson than simply good fortune in an early-season small sample. He’s made a lot of contact, and nearly all of it has been competitive, even if it doesn’t look traditional. The concern, of course, is that a 2.6% walk rate puts tons of pressure on his ability to keep slashing one hoppers through the hole. Those will surely slump at some point, leaving him without a means of reaching base. I assume he’ll start walking a bit more as the season progresses; his walk rate last year started really low following his debut, but reached 10.5% over the last two weeks of the season. Perhaps he’ll slow down soon and start taking more pitches, or pitchers will start being a bit more careful. Or maybe he won’t adjust and instead will simply submit his career to the will of whatever higher power distributes BABIP.

Regardless, this is an encouraging development for the Orioles, who lost their long-term plan at second base, Jackson Holliday, to a hamate injury in the preseason. Holliday is on a Triple-A rehab assignment at the moment and will likely take back his spot soon. But Jackson happens to be a utility fielder who can play third base, where the Orioles also have a hole following Jordan Westburg’s UCL injury. If Jackson continues to hit, he will continue to find playing time somewhere in the Baltimore lineup.