2025 Prep Baseball Player of the Year
July 7, 2025
Ethan Holliday has generated, and earned, one of the most decorated and famous high school careers we’ve seen this decade.
This Sunday, we’ll see where the latest member of the Holliday crew lands in the MLB Draft, following in the footsteps of his own father, Matt, and brother, Jackson. Before that though, we’ll toss one more individual award onto the Hollidays’ collective trophy pile as we name Ethan the 2025 Prep Baseball Player of the Year.
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Ethan Holliday SS / Stillwater, OK / 2025"Beyond the pristine tools, Holliday’s major league mindset is refreshing to see. He carries himself with a maturity rarely seen at this level, and while there is a calmness to his demeanor on the diamond, it should not be mistaken for lack of intensity for the 2025 class’ top prospect is a fierce competitor. Built with durable athleticism on an impressive 6-foot-4, 210-pound, Holliday’s ability to slow the game down is unmatched right now in the class, and he patiently waits out pitches, sometimes between multiple at-bats, for the right one the same way a surfer might sit out on the water a full day for the perfect wave. However, that sweet, well-connected, left-handed stroke is capable of pouncing in an instance as was on full display with a 111 mph thunderous line drive on Day Two of USA Trials. Hanging the leg early on in counts as the hands slowly separate into a power position before igniting electric bat speed, Holliday is equally adept in shortening the stride when behind, and appears gifted in matching planes against different vertical approach angles. Potentially challenged by a select few with regards to the top raw power in the class, it really is not all that close when considering how easy the loft and operation work from the Oklahoma native." – Shooter Hunt, VP of Scouting, from July 2024 |
Holliday is already the third player from Oklahoma to win the award, despite the fact that we’ve only been handing it out since the 2017 season. In that time, Jackson Jobe (Heritage Hall HS, OK) won the award in 2021 and Ethan’s own brother Jackson Holliday (Stillwater HS, OK) won it the following year, marking the first time brothers have each won the national honor for us.
Still, Ethan has forged his own path to this point.
In the spring of 2022, back when the 2025 MLB Draft was too far off to even contemplate, Holliday was a freshman on Oklahoma’s Stillwater High varsity squad. He was etched in as the team’s everyday third baseman. Despite it being his very first year playing high school ball, everyone knew his name. The last name is famous, belonging to his father who played parts of 15 years in the Majors, as well to his brother Jackson, the team’s shortstop, who was one of the top-ranked seniors in the country at that time.
But baseball is a family business for the Hollidays. Ethan’s grandfather Tom Holliday was a NCAA baseball coach from 1976 to 2015, and he spent parts of four decades at Oklahoma State, where another of his sons, Josh, is currently the head coach.
The sport effectively runs through the Holliday bloodstream at this point, and Ethan is the latest example.
To reiterate, Holliday’s 2025 POTY award goes beyond name recognition. When Jackson won the award in 2022, he put together one of the most impressive offensive seasons Oklahoma has ever seen, hitting .685 in 40 games with 52 extra-base hits, including 17 home runs. Ethan virtually matched his brother’s historic senior-year production, hitting over .600 himself (.611) reaching base nearly 75 percent of the time (.743) which led to a 2.308 OPS – and he even notched a couple more homers than his brother, finishing the spring with 19 total, which led the state and is tied for the most in the nation.
Top draft prospect Ethan Holliday's swing is too smooth 😮💨
— MLB (@MLB) May 9, 2025
(📽️: @PrepBaseballOK) pic.twitter.com/QCrPITsCfY
“He's arguably the most consistent player that I have ever seen – in every phase,” said Bret Schwartz, Prep Baseball Oklahoma Scouting Director. “Consistent in his production, but also in his demeanor and ability to attack adversity while staying present from play to play. The biggest question mark preseason came with his defense at shortstop, but he quickly put those to rest with improved range and ability to complete plays deep in the hole and coming in.”
Since the summer of 2022, Holliday has been seated at the very top of the Class of 2025 National Rankings. It’s rare to have a high school player nearly go the distance as the No. 1 overall talent in the nation throughout his prep career, but Holliday basically did just that. And as our Oklahoma Scouting Director referenced above, when a prospect gets famous like this, he’s generally subject to some nitpicking and overevaluation. Yet still, Holliday overcame some of those small question marks over the years, and his defensive improvements as a senior turned them into answers with exclamation points. Now still, Holliday is the consensus No. 1-ranked draft prospect by most outlets, including our own.
While Holliday answered many (or even all) of the on-field questions evaluators have, it appears he took it upon himself to reassure decision-makers that he has a sixth tool as well this spring: leadership.
As a senior, Ethan guided Stillwater with more than just his bat and glove.
“The unquestioned leader of a Stillwater team that won their district, hosted and won a regional, and made a state tourney appearance with youth scattered amongst the diamond,” Schwartz said. “After the game, we consistently witnessed Holliday sticking around to visit with youth players – signing autographs and taking pictures for an extended period of time.”
It was something that his Stillwater coaches echoed, too, and it’s something that’ll give the execs at Sunday’s MLB Draft that much more confidence that the latest Holliday has all of the tools to thrive in pro ball.
While the Nationals’ organization experiences turnover at the top in the week leading up the draft in which it owns the first overall pick, they’ll have the opportunity to select a rare prep player like Holliday – a tooled-up, left-handed-hitting shortstop with power traits, leadership, and as someone who’s literally grown up around the game at the very highest level.
Should the Nationals choose Ethan with the No. 1 pick, he and Jackson would become the first-ever brothers to each be selected first overall in the MLB Draft. The closest brothers came to earning that honor belongs to B.J. and Justin Upton, who went No. 2 and No. 1 overall, respectively, in the 2002 and 2005 drafts.
Regardless of where Holliday lands on Sunday, his terrific senior season in Stillwater has earned him the Prep Baseball’s eighth all-time National Player of the Year Award, and for that, we congratulate him.
PREVIOUS PREP BASEBALL PLAYERS OF THE YEAR
| PLAYER | High School (ST) | YEAR |
| Konnor Griffin | Jackson Prep (MS) | 2024 |
| Max Clark | Franklin Community (IN) | 2023 |
| Jackson Holliday | Stillwater (OK) | 2022 |
| Jackson Jobe | Heritage Hall (OK) | 2021 |
| Brett Baty | Lake Travis (TX) | 2019 |
| Mason Englert | Forney (TX) | 2018 |
| MacKenzie Gore | Whiteville (NC) | 2017 |