I’m betting you missed the big Jackson Holliday news. I almost did, but I hopped on milb.com and found out he moved to the #1 position on MLBPipeline’s prospect list.

If you’re a baseball fan, the surname probably sounds familiar. It should. The Orioles top prospect is the son of former big leaguer, Matt Holliday. It was probably only a matter of time that he claimed the top berth and it’s not because of name recognition. Although they guys determining such things don’t ignore DNA when they make up these lists.

Off the top of my pointed noggin, I’d expect to find a couple hundred sons of former ballplayers amongst the guys currently toiling in the minors. They have a bunch of hurdles to overcome in reaching the big leagues, not which is their heritage in most cases. Some are there only because of their name and maybe an above average amateur career-they will fizzle out sooner than later. Others will spend their lives in the game (lucky them) reaching different levels playing, and varying levels of success.

Non-Orioles fans probably don’t spend sleepless hours thinking about Holliday or his progress. Baltimore fans are probably counting the days until he reaches Camden Yards and joins fellow prospects Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, and Jordan Westburg. Rival fans in the AL East can’t be happy by these recent developments as the Orioles look to be relevant again. There’s an entire generation of fans in that division who don’t know anything about their rich history.

Of course, the news of Holliday’s new ranking comes as no surprise to the fans that follow and chart prospects both for fun and for $$. Both the baseball card collectors and autograph collectors have a vested interest in who’s where on the prospect leaderboard. Likewise, they’re paying attention to who has fallen in the rankings-some out of the top 100.

Even the casual fan, the gal or guy that pays some attention to what’s happening down on the farms, and who gets a little mention on their team’s broadcast, becomes aware of certain names. Some teams share as much info as they figure their fans can handle and others only as much as they have access to. Newspapers being what they are today, can’t afford to send reporters to minor league games and thus have to provide third-hand information.

Sometimes the way the accounts of these ranking fluctuations are written, I think the writers believe they are determining the futures of the players and not the front offices. While the rankings are based on conversations with organizations, the teams themselves don’t slot players based on what the outside rankings are.

I know of three players in the MWL who I’ve seen this year whose ranking dropped severely this week. I don’t expect this to impact how their teams view them. Coincidentally, each of the three is extremely young for the league and may have been overrated. If I can get back and see one of them for a third or maybe fourth time this summer, I’ll see how his status with the autograph collectors stands.

Being selected with the #1 overall pick in the draft doesn’t guarantee success at the ML level, nor does attaining the #1 slot on the prospect rankings. However, it does confer a higher set of expectations.