SARASOTA, Fla. — Cody Asche said the images are “burned in my brain.”

Jackson Holliday’s reaction as it clicked in the batting cage. His new swing and how it kept Holliday balanced. The excitement when the results were finally there.

Late last season, Holliday and Asche, who was an offensive strategy coach, worked on a change to the wunderkind’s swing, and it worked. It was a small sample, but after a disappointing rookie campaign, the unambiguous success that was Holliday’s final series of the season wasn’t going to be ignored.

“The game is always going to tell us what’s right and what’s wrong,” Asche said.

Holliday rid his big leg kick in favor of a toe tap during the final week of the regular season after imitating Shohei Ohtani’s simple yet powerful swing in the cage with Asche. In his first start using the new mechanism, Holliday walked twice, smacked an opposite-field double and reached base five times.

“That’s the player that I can be and that I have been in the minor leagues,” Holliday said this spring. “I showed some signs in Minnesota, and I’m excited to build off that.”

Holliday, now 21, entered this spring in a much different position than last year when he battled all camp to make the club and controversially didn’t. A year later, Holliday has gone from the No. 1 prospect in baseball to a young player searching to find his way after his first taste of the big leagues turned sour.

He again dedicated his offseason to improving his game — his swing, his speed, his defense at second base — as well as his strength and nutrition through an intense workout program and protein-heavy diet. The results were noticeable when he arrived at the Ed Smith Stadium complex in early February. Now weighing 200 pounds (up 5 pounds from last spring), Holliday’s face might still be the one of someone who just recently became legally allowed to consume alcohol, but his physique, specifically his arms, is that of an MLB veteran.

“He still looks really young,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “But physically? Physically, his strength is impressive.”

Holliday entered last spring as one of the most hyped baseball prospects this century. He was the consensus No. 1 prospect, on the cusp of the big leagues at 20 years old. Through his first year and a half in the minors, he had never struggled, zooming up the ladder to reach Triple-A at just 19. Then he played so well throughout spring training that some believed service-time manipulation was the only explanation as to why the Orioles opted to start Holliday in the minors.

When he reached the majors in April, he finally seemed human. Holliday, for maybe the first time in his life, couldn’t hit the ball. In two weeks, he struck out 18 times and recorded only two hits in 36 plate appearances. He spent the next three months back in the minors.

Holliday isn’t wishing that first stint didn’t happen, though. “It was a great learning opportunity,” he said. But he also isn’t putting too much weight on a sample of 36 plate appearances. After he returned to the majors July 31, Holliday put up the type of numbers that would be expected of a player that young: a .218 average with a .650 OPS. The lows were low — a 4-for-38 stretch in September — but the highs were even higher: the grand slam onto Eutaw Street, the four-hit day to put his name alongside Brooks Robinson and, of course, that game in Minnesota.

“Yeah, if I could flush the first however many at-bats and go from there, it was an OK start,” he said with a chuckle.

Holliday doesn’t have to look far for who he’s hoping to emulate this season. The second baseman saw how teammates Colton Cowser and Jordan Westburg, whose lockers in the Orioles’ clubhouse at Ed Smith Stadium are just feet from Holliday’s, broke out last season. Cowser is the most apt comparison after the former top prospect hit just .115 in 2023 and then emerged last season to finish second in American League Rookie of the Year voting. While he’s not eligible for the award, Holliday is hoping to take the same leap Cowser did.

“That’s kind of a similar path that I’d like to take,” Holliday said.

Hyde also used Cowser as an example when asked whether Holliday is better prepared for the big leagues now after his struggles last season.

“I think we saw that with Cowser the year before, getting a taste of the big leagues,” said the manager going into his seventh season in Baltimore. “You understand big league pitching is a lot different than anything they’ve ever seen before, maybe there’s some adjustments they need to make. Most young guys have that. I thought Jackson made really good strides, honestly, the last couple weeks of the season swing mechanics-wise. He took it into the offseason, and he looks really good. I’m excited about him.”

Asche, who was promoted to hitting coach this offseason, wants Holliday to take the natural progression most big league hitters take rather than trying to jump ahead to the end.

“I see it in levels,” Asche said. “You’ve got to learn how to hit, you’ve got to learn how to get on base, then you can tap into the slug. … But, first and foremost, Jax has to hit a lot of line drives, he’s got to get on base. We know what the ceiling is for him as a player, and that’s going to come down the road.”

The point of the toe tap is so Holliday can be on time against any offering from the pitcher. High fastball? The hope is it allows Holliday to catch up to it. Low changeup? Holliday can stay back and poke it the other way. Slider out of the zone? Perhaps he can lay off it rather than swing over the top of it.

The most encouraging part of Holliday’s profile in the minors evaporated the moment he reached the majors. Across 218 minor league games, Holliday walked (201 times) nearly as often as he struck out (207). That plate discipline and batting eye combined with his hitting tools and burgeoning power is why Holliday became the third Oriole in a row to be named the sport’s No. 1 prospect, joining Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson.

However, it didn’t carry over against major league pitching last year.

Holliday struck out 69 times and drew only 15 walks in 60 games. His 20% strikeout rate in the minors ballooned to 33.2% in the majors.

That’s perhaps why Holliday took to the toe tap after resisting it for years. He walked three times in those two games in Minnesota without striking out.

“The main thing is just cutting down the swing and miss. I think when I can put the ball in play at a high mark, I have a chance to get a lot of hits,” Holliday said. “I feel like I’m in a good spot every time, and I think there’s just a little bit less room for error than there was with the leg kick.”

Hyde has expressed to Holliday his desire for the youngster to adopt a “line drive approach” and allow the power in his game to develop over time.

In a lineup with Henderson, Tyler O’Neill and Colton Cowser, the Orioles don’t need Holliday to become a power threat. They just need him to be Jackson Holliday.

“I want him to be an exciting player,” Hyde said.

Holliday’s chasing the same thing.

Have a news tip? Contact Jacob Calvin Meyer at jameyer@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/JCalvinMeyer.