Only an act of science can make Jeremiah Jackson go on a journey.
Jackson entered Sunday with 65 plate appearances in 2026. He had 19 hits, including five homers and two doubles. He also struck out 17 times, had two double plays, lined a sacrifice fly, and broke up a bunt. He’s worked through almost all the regular results to see the plate to start the new season – but he hasn’t drawn a walk yet. In fact, Jackson entered Sunday as the hitter with the most plate appearances in the majors that he didn’t record on base balls.
That was the case early Sunday as the Orioles wrapped up their series in Cleveland. Jackson pitched in the second inning, hit a line drive single in the fourth, and reached on an error in the fifth.
He then stepped to the plate to lead off the eighth. On the mound was the nasty Erik Sabrowski, fresh out of the Guardians bullpen. Sabrowski started him off with a big curve ball in the dirt. Jackson gave up one touchdown. Sabrowski threw his signature fastball, but it ran too deep for the second ball. Sabrowski tried to swing to the other side of the plate, but missed three balls.
And it happened. Sabrowski threw another fastball, this time up the middle of the plate. But he again missed big – very high – with the fourth ball. Jackson has slated his first tour for 2026.
Except, he hadn’t. When Jackson was about to put down his bat, the umpire called a strike. Jackson paused, touched his head, and proceeded to put his bat down and remove his equipment, with a curious eye on the video board. He zooms in on the animated ball, revealing that the pitch was indeed up and out of the fourth ball zone. Jackson went first.
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A Brief Tangent on ABS Challenges
This is actually i tone that justifies the challenge program in my mind. In general, I’m not a big fan of the challenge system. I think it’s an outrage that the league made the “wrong calls” feature of the game, rather than just correcting the calls. It’s a little frustrating to make Jackson go through this whole process unnecessarily, considering the goal is to improve ball accuracy and hitting.
But I’m glad the phone was finally fixed. Referees over the years have shown a human tendency to “go even higher” on reduced counts – increasing the area by 3-0 counts, decreasing the area by 0-2 counts. Here we can see the rate at which the ball is called a pitch out of the zone in all counts compared to the 3-0 count:
Out-of-Zone Called Ball Level
| A year | Everything Counts | 3-0 Counting | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 95.1% | 85.7% | 9.4 |
| 2025 | 94.7% | 87.3% | 7.4 |
| 2024 | 93.3% | 84.8% | 8.5 |
| 2023 | 93.5% | 86.0% | 7.5 |
| 2022 | 93.0% | 84.0% | 9.0 |
| 2021 | 92.5% | 83.7% | 8.8 |
| 2020 | 92.1% | 84.0% | 8.1 |
| 2019 | 92.0% | 81.4% | 10.6 |
| 2018 | 92.0% | 82.1% | 9.9 |
| 2017 | 91.6% | 82.2% | 9.4 |
| 2016 | 91.2% | 79.9% | 11.3 |
| 2015 | 90.5% | 79.5% | 11.0 |
Source: Baseball Savant
Note: All challengers will arrive by 4/19
This bias has gradually corrected itself over the years as referees have improved their overall accuracy. Interestingly, so far in 2026, these calls seem to be very common. The table above only shows unchallenged points. Through Sunday, there have been 11 3-0 innings on pitches out of the zone where they were challenged: eight (incorrectly) called strikes on challenged batters, and three (correctly) called balls challenged by the fielder. This means that the correct call rate by human umpires in 3-0 situations outside the zone was 84.3%, which brings the difference relative to all statistics to 10.7 percentage points – the largest since 2016. After challenges, the correct call rate is 86.1%, which looks very consistent with recent seasons.
Now, if we were to look at it another way – called balls in the field with 0-2 counts – the challenge system seems to do a little bit to eliminate the bias, so I think it works in general. But this is not a post about ABS. Let’s continue.
Come Back to Life Jackson
Anyway…
That first outing, science or not, raised Jackson’s wRC+ to 146 through his first 69 plate appearances in 2026. That’s incredible. That’s incredible. That… likely won’t last (he’s already down to 136 after Tuesday’s game, where he made his second outing of the season), but it’s a good sign for the Orioles.
Jackson doesn’t go around much because he has a temper. He has hit 61.4% of pitches so far in 2026, which is the second-highest rate among professional hitters. He’s not exactly racist, either. Few batsmen over-swing or out-of-bounds. In fact, Jackson ranked in the bottom 5% of the majors by SEAGER (a plate orientation metric developed by Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus). He has worked three touchdowns in just six games this year. Walking is not part of his game.
What’s interesting about Jackson is that he doesn’t have the contact tools you’d expect from a free throw shooter. He’s hitting low (30.6% in 2026), so he’s not in the same bucket as Jacob Wilson. He also doesn’t shoot the ball much (35.2%), so he’s not in Jo Adell’s bucket, either.
No, Jackson is in the middle. He got a 23.1% clip so far in 2026, about average. And he’s still producing a solid .430 xwOBACON despite his modest exit velocity. He has a low, level, quick swing that can hook the ball anywhere the ball is thrown. We can see that in his launch angle distribution:
I like this distribution of his. Again, he doesn’t hit the ball hard enough to swing for the fences regularly. Instead, he drives downfield, including tons of high grounders and low line drives. He rarely exceeds 32 degrees of launch, which is smart, because those batted balls are effectively the same as someone who doesn’t have top-level exit velocity. His popup rate is 1.9%. This is a classic Jackson hit:
When Jackson pitches, he’s more likely to be on the pull side — almost half of his high contact so far is going to the shallow end of the park. So while I doubt he’ll continue his 30-plus pace, it’s not too surprising that he’s already hit five.
I especially like this family. Eduardo Rodriguez missed the plate with a fastball up the middle, and Jackson took his usual hack, blasting it at 110.4 mph at 18 degrees to left:
In other words, it looks like something is going to work for Jackson rather than just getting lucky with a small sample of the first season. He’s very connected to her, and almost everything was competitive, even if it didn’t look traditional. The concern, of course, is that a 2.6% walk rate puts tons of pressure on his ability to consistently slice one-hoppers in the hole. Surely those will fall at some point, leaving him with no way to reach the base. I think he will start to slow down as the season goes on; His walk rate last year really took off following his start, but reached 10.5% in the last two weeks of the season. Maybe he’ll slow down soon and start taking more pitches, or pitchers will start to be a little more careful. Or maybe he won’t adjust and instead will just submit his work to the will of whatever higher power distributes BABIP.
Regardless, this is an encouraging development for the Orioles, who lost their longtime second baseman, Jackson Holliday, to a hamstring injury in the preseason. Holliday is currently on a rehab assignment in Triple-A and will be back in action soon. But Jackson is an infielder 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 get playing time somewhere on Baltimore’s roster.
