2023 MLB Futures Game: The top star of baseball’s next generation? He’s probably named Jackson

SEATTLE — When Cincinnati Reds phenom Elly De La Cruz — quickly ascending to first-name-only status in the baseball universe — officially graduates from prospect eligibility sometime next weekend, MLB Pipeline’s top two prospects in baseball will be Jackson Holliday and Jackson Chourio.

At No. 1, there’s Holliday, the second-generation star who has torched several levels of the minors since the Baltimore Orioles drafted him one year ago. The soon-to-be No. 2, Chourio is a precocious Venezuelan center fielder in the Milwaukee Brewers organization who is somehow younger than Holliday. A third Jackson, future San Diego Padres shortstop Jackson Merrill, will likely enter the top 10.

Despite what it might sound like, this is not 60% of a chart-conquering family band. These Jacksons don’t really know one another yet — their first exposure was at Saturday’s Futures Game, a 5-0 win for the National League — but put them together, and there’s nonetheless something resonant. It sounds something like the banging of a generational gong.

As recently as the 1980s — when Reggie Jackson was cruising toward the Hall of Fame and Michael Jackson was moonwalking on MTV — “Jackson” was not among the top 200 most popular names for baby boys. A right-handed Toronto Blue Jays pitcher from Oklahoma named Jackson Todd was the rare major-league player with the name, and when he finished his four-year career with 286 2/3 innings of 4.40 ERA ball in 1981, he was the most productive MLB player ever with the first name Jackson.

It’s a title he still holds. A catcher named Jackson Williams, who played 14 games for the San Francisco Giants in 2014 and 2015, is second. Holliday, Chourio, Merrill and your 8-year-old cousin are all tied for third, as the few other Jacksons in MLB history have negative WAR totals.

“I’ve noticed that. There haven’t been very many big leaguers named Jackson,” Holliday said Saturday. “So hopefully we can change that.”

At this point, it would be a significant (and disheartening) surprise if they didn’t.

Having earned a promotion to High-A at 19, Holliday is batting .314/.452/.488 with five homers and 17 steals against competition almost entirely older than him. Raised in and around ballparks as the son of longtime MLB star Matt Holliday, the young shortstop’s “swing decisions are absolutely elite, especially considering age and level,” according to Baseball Prospectus.

Recent No. 1 overall prospects, a mantle Holliday is likely to hold at midseason and next spring, include Wander Franco, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Public evaluators are not foolproof — see Jo Adell, Alex Reyes and Victor Robles — but generally, this level of acclaim foretells a serious big-league career.

Chourio and Merrill are a tier down from Holliday by most scouts’ accounting, but they’re still firmly among the most promising players matriculating toward the majors. Chourio blasted onto the radar in 2018 with a dominant age-18 season and has played all of 2023 at Double-A. Merrill, whom FanGraphs calls “Michael Brantley, except at shortstop,” is running a .280 batting average with 10 homers and 10 steals in High-A this season, just past his 20th birthday.

And if this rising trio weren’t enough competition, there’s more on the way.

In the 1990s, 23,592 babies were named Jackson, making it the 152nd-most popular boy name. But in the 2000s, the decade currently dominating MLB’s top prospect lists, it skyrocketed into the top 50 names for baby boys, with the Social Security Administration counting 94,482 of them. In the 2010s, 116,163 American boys were named Jackson, putting the name 19th, just behind David and ahead of Joseph.

Merrill said his name was the product of a family pattern. His dad is Josh. His mom is Jennie. Once his older brother was also Josh, they had to keep going with J names.

Holliday? Well, he is seemingly a product of the name’s growing buzz.

“I think my parents just thought it was cool at that time, and I think it’s caught on,” he said. “There’s a lot of people with my name.”

Not many of them are famous, though. So soon enough, the young baseballing Jacksons could surpass not only Todd but also the limited ranks of notable Jacksons in the wider world.

“I don’t even — I don’t even know if I can name one of them,” Holliday said when asked who the most famous Jackson is, to him.

What about Jackson Browne, the purveyor of “Running on Empty” and other California-tinged rock hits? Merrill had never heard of him and quickly realized why — and it’s not because Browne’s actual first name was Clyde.

“Oh, I’m an ‘03 guy, so I don’t really know ‘70s,” he said, referencing his birth year.

What about Jackson Pollock?

“Yeah! Painter.” Merrill got that one. Holliday said he knew the name but couldn’t place why.

The best-known Jacksons, to these two, were the ones sharing the Futures Game field in Seattle.

“Honestly, the other two are the only ones I know,” Merrill said. “So hopefully we can build the Jackson legacy a little more.”

They better hurry. The next next-generation baseball name is already brewing: Both Mike Trout and Trea Turner named their sons Beckham.