Kyle Harrison was pitching for the Double-A Richmond Flying Squirrels when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in August 2022. Then a fast-rising prospect in the San Francisco Giants system, the now-22-year-old southpaw had broken down the early evolution of his arsenal for me prior to a game at Portland, Maine’s Hadlock Field. Fast forward to this past week, and we were reacquainting at a far-more-fabled venue. Harrison was preparing to take the mound at Fenway Park for his 14th big-league start, his seventh this season. As I’m wont to do in such scenarios, I asked the dark-horse rookie-of-the-year candidate what’s changed since our 20-months-ago conversation. Not surprisingly, he’s continued to evolve.
“I’ve added a cutter, although I haven’t thrown it as much as I’d like to,” Harrison told me. “Other than that, it’s the same pitches. The slider has been feeling great, and the changeup is something that’s really come along for me; it’s a pitch I’ve been relying on a lot. I really hadn’t thrown it that much in the minors — it felt like I didn’t really have the control for it — but then all of a sudden it clicked. Now I’ve got three weapons, plus the cutter.” Including his Thursday effort in Boston, Harrison has thrown his new cutter — Baseball Savant categorizes it as a slider — just six times all season.
When we’d talked in Portland, the lefty called the pitch a sweepy slider. Savant categorizes it as a slurve. What is it? “It’s got a two-plane break, so I think slurve is probably the best way to describe it,” Harrison replied to my question. “That’s why I added the cutter, to get more strikes. In Triple-A, I wasn’t able to land that big slurve as much on the ABS [automated ball-strike system] strike zone.”
The movement profile of his breaker differs from his Double-A days, an evolution that was more organic than by design. The bottom line is that two-plane is now the norm. “I’m getting anywhere from negative-five to probably negative-eight vert on it,” explained Harrison. “It’s kind of getting that depth point, like a curveball, but it’s also keeping the horizontal, anywhere from eight to 16. I haven’t lost any horizontal overall, although I have lost some in a couple of starts. We’ve been talking about it, arm angle and all that. Having ways to fix it in between starts is huge for me. I need to get it more dialed in, get that consistent 13-to-16 sweep.”
His changeup also differs from the one he was throwing in the Eastern League. Harrison still holds the ball with a modified Vulcan grip, but he’s now spreading his fingers wider in order to take off more velocity. Instead of 88-90 mph, the pitch is now coming in 86-87. “Having a little more split with the fingers allows me to kill a little more speed,” explained Harrison.
As chance would have it, only 14% of the 95 pitches he threw in Boston were changeups, while 20% were slurves. When I asked him about that following the game, he said that he didn’t feel his changeup was as good as usual, in part because the Fenway Park mound felt “a little flatter, per se.” Conversely, he felt that his slurve and fastball were playing well.
Harrison’s heater — the one pitch in his repertoire that has remained unchanged — was indeed good in his five-inning, one-run-allowed effort. Only five of his fastballs were put into play, while 10 elicited a whiff, 11 went for a called strike, and 13 were fouled off. Movement and deception are keys to the 93-mph offering’s effectiveness, as is consistency of arm action.
“I wouldn’t say ride,” Harrison said of his fastball’s movement profile. “I don’t think that’s the right term, because that calls for induced vert, and if my induced vert gets too high, that means my arm slot is creeping up too high and I lose my vertical approach angle.
Harrison has a 3.79 ERA, a 3.87 FIP, and a 23.9% strikeout rate in 38 innings this season. Three months shy of his 23rd birthday, he’s one of the youngest pitchers in MLB. The results, and his continuing evolution, are coming along quite well.
——— RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS
Pedro Guerrero went 11 for 15 against Dennis Rasmussen. Vladimir Guerrero went 11 for 19 against Chris Young. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is 8 for 10 against Shawn Armstrong. Wilton Guerrero went 8 for 11 against Mark Clark. Mario Guerrero went 9 for 13 against Rick Honeycutt.
——— NEWS NOTES
The Baltimore Orioles announced on Friday that Terry Crowley and Nick Markakis have been inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame. Crowley played parts of 12 seasons with the Orioles, primarily as a DH and a PH, and later spent 16 seasons as the hitting coach. Markakis played nine seasons with the Orioles and ranks among…
