There R Giants #3: Kyle Harrison
Photo Credit: Michelle Valenzuela | San Jose Giants
We’re almost to the finish line of the There R Giants Top 50. Over the winter months, I’m writing a post on each of the fifty players in my rankings, leading us back to the much-needed spring. Our list of previously covered players is getting a little long, so from here on out I’m moving the links for the full list down the bottom of the post.
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Here’s the thing: Kyle Harrison could be the #1 prospect in this system. Perhaps he will be, someday soon. And he’ll be a good one! He’d be a good #1 prospect in many systems. The Giants showed first round conviction (in terms of dollars, anyway) on a player who was generally viewed as about the 70th or so best player in the 2020 draft, and a year later, saw their faith rewarded in triplicate. Harrison was, without a doubt, the best 19-year-old pitcher in pro ball last year. He was almost certainly the best 19-year-old pitcher in the country, pro or amateur, and he could probably make a decent argument to have been the best 19-year-old pitcher in the world last year.
Of course, being the best performer and the best prospect aren’t always the same thing. Still, Harrison has taken a huge step forward in his standing among his contemporaries, and if he repeats his 2021 performance in the coming year, he’ll very likely be considered one of the very best left-handed pitching prospects in the game at 20 years of age. He’s very good!
Kyle Harrison is NOT the #1 prospect in this system right now — at least not in my eyes. That’s somewhat to do with attrition rates for pitchers, somewhat to do with his ongoing efforts to dial in his command, and a lot to do with the quality of the two guys I have listed ahead of him — who are also very good! We have, in other words, reached a line of demarcation: from here on we’re talking about the guys who should be — if all goes according to plan — the core of the next generation of Giants teams. On the these three rocks — Harrison, Marco Luciano, and Luis Matos — will Farhan build his church. If this front office gets to where it “hopes and intends to go,” (as Farhan says at the beginning of each and every Baggs and Brisbee podcast), it will likely be, in large part, because these three players developed into something like the best versions of themselves. If that happens, the future looks bright indeed.
From here on out, we’re talking about foundational pieces. Let’s get to it!
Background
Harrison is generally thought of, by Giants fans, as a NorCal kid, so it may have come as some surprise when, in a recent interview with Jim Callis, he described himself as being “from Southern California.” In fact, he spent significant time in both halves of the state, growing up in Orange County until about the age of 10 (the origin of his Angels loyalty as a boy). The family moved up to Danville at that point, which is how Harrison found his way to De La Salle’s high school baseball program in Concord.
De La Salle is one of the premier high school programs in the country, so it’s no small feat that Harrison made the varsity team as a sophomore, and was a staple of the team’s starting pitching for three years. That team that he joined as an underclassman was ranked #2 in the country, as was his junior season team, which won its sectional championship. Harrison did little other than win as a high school pitcher, going 21-1 in his career with a teeny, tiny 1.91 ERA. “The biggest thing the Giants fans are gonna get out of Kyle,” his high school coach, David Jeans, told me after the 2020 draft, “is that he’s a winner. You know, he wants to win. He doesn’t necessarily need to light up a gun or strike out every hitter or do whatever. First and foremost he’s a winner.” Let’s put a pin in that “light up a radar gun” comment for now.
Aside from his outstanding high school work, Harrison pitched in MLB’s Prospect Development Pipeline league (an invitational development league for rising high school players) and was part of Team USA’s 18U National Team in 2018, which won a World Cup title. For Team USA, Harrison out-performed some of his more renowned teammates — guys with bigger fastballs — picking up 12 strikeouts in 10 scoreless innings. Along the way, he crossed paths with a potential future teammate, when he struck out Adrian Sugastey in an appearance against Panama.
Going into the 2020 draft, Harrison was certainly a well-known prospect (Perfect Game had him ranked as the second best high school left-hander in the draft), but he was considered to be something of a “pitchability” guy — a lefty who could throw strikes and competed with solid but perhaps fringy stuff, compared some of his contemporaries being talked about in the 1st round, who were scraping up against triple digits with their fastballs (the Phillies Mick Abel, for instance, taken with the 15th pick, or San Diego’s Justin Lange, taken at pick #34). Unlike those big arms that scouting directors salivated over, Harrison was throwing 90-93 with his fastball and keeping guys off balance with a slurvy breaker — but locating both pitches well.
It was a somewhat surprising profile to give $2.5 million dollars to, as the Giants did after making Harrison their fifth pick of the 2020 draft. Clearly, they weren’t seeing a “pitchability” guy in Harrison. Their scouts saw something else entirely — something similar to Jeans’ view when he called Harrison “the best pitcher in the state.” And, it turned out, they were quite right. Following a summer in the weight room, Harrison showed up at the Giants’ Instructional League camp in the fall of 2020 with some added muscle, and some added stuff to go with it.
Hitting the weights was nothing new for Harrison. De La Salle had a focused, four-year weight training program that typically saw their players make major strength and weight gains. Kyle had already gone from a skinny freshman throwing 81 mph to a more mature senior hitting the low 90s. After graduation, the process intensified.
If you want to understand how Harrison went from a high school senior touching 93 to a “blow the doors” out Instrux performance, where he was touching 96 just five months later — an Instrux performance that inspired Baseball America’s Josh Norris to declare “he is the #1 pitching prospect in their system, period” before Harrison had ever thrown in an official professional game— consider this skinny little kid:
… and then scroll back up and look at the footage I shot of him at spring training a week ago. Video might not even do justice to just how physical Harrison already is as a 20 year old. At the Papago camp, the pitchers sit around charting pitches of games, if they’re not scheduled to go that day. One day I saw Harrison sitting next to 24-year-old Pepperdine grad Wil Jensen, and I was struck by how much more physical Harrison looked, particularly across his broad shoulders. It would have taken two Jensens sitting next to each other to fill out Harrison’s jersey. There’s a real Bumgarner-ish quality to Harrison’s physique, as he seems to be growing into real “man strength” at a tender age.
In addition to his broad shoulders, Harrison gained strength in a thicker lower half that he really utilizes to drive off the mound, giving his delivery real power, as you can see in this excellent footage from the functionally-named You Tuber: “Baseball.”
Adding that muscularity to a pitcher who had grown up surviving on his ability to hit spots and change speeds, instantly transformed Harrison from an interesting if low-ceilinged 3rd round pick into quite possibly the highest-ceilinged pitcher in the organization. And added to his physical gifts, Harrison brought another Bumgarnerish quality with him as well: his competitiveness. “He’s unbelievably mature and competitive,” according to Jeans. “He might be the best baseball player I’ve ever coached in terms of not getting too big for the moment. He truly believes that he’s better than the guy that he’s facing. He’s a special talent.”
Scouting Report
So, forget everything that above video says. That is NOT the report any longer. As the 2021 season wore on, he seemed to get stronger, hitting 97 and even 98 late in outings, deep into the summer. He’s already throwing 95-96 early in the spring with his fastball, and I think there’s a chance he could touch higher ranges this summer, perhaps skirting close to the century mark at some point. That velocity comes out of an extremely unusual, low release that has to make for some truly uncomfortable at bats for left-handed hitters. It’s no wonder that when Jim Callis asked him who he compared himself to, Harrison’s answer was Chris Sale. Though their body types are very different, that sort of high octane stuff coming from an unusually low slot does connect the two lefties.
Harrison tends to rely on the fastball up in the zone, where it has some real sizzle, thanks to excellent spin rates. However, he also pushed it up above the zone frequently last year, leading to a too-high 4.74 BB per 9 innings. Harnessing his fastball command will be a big part of his development and will play a large role in how close to his ceiling he’s ultimately able to come. Talking to Harrison last year, he believed one part of the issue came from an inconsistent arm slot, as he began to drop his arm even lower through the course of the season. That resulted in getting under the ball and pushing it upwards, as well as losing some of the bite on his slider.
At its best though, the fastball really has hop at the the top of the zone as well as tail to his arm side, often leading batters to chase it off the outside.
Harrison’s second best pitch is his slider, which sits in the lower 80s. This, too, has undergone a metamorphosis since his high school days, when it was more slurve than slide. As a pro, Harrison has tightened up the break on the slider, making it equally effective against lefties and righties, whom he can backfoot with sharp breaking action. The pitch is particularly effective given how well he tunnels it off of his fastball, leading to some sickly hacks.
If all of that’s not enough, Harrison also produced whiffs with his changeup last year. In the start I saw him throw in late July, his slider was running a little flat, and he turned to the change as his primary strikeout pitch, at one point throwing four consecutive changeups for swing and misses. This year, however, he’s gone to a new grip on the changeup, switching from a circle change that he used last year to a two-seam grip. He only busted out a couple of those when I saw him in spring training last week, so that one is still a work in progress. He’s also working on a curve, which is an interesting pitch selection from his arm slot.
Harrison is competitive and will battle with whatever pitches are working for him on a given night. And he has an excellent feel for changing speeds and moving the batter’s sightline around. His feel for pitching is excellent and his stuff continues to improve. The biggest question for his development will be the improvement of his command — as he himself acknowledges. However, it’s worth recalling that he was known for his command in high school, and whatever strike throwing challenges he went through last year are almost certainly connected to his changing, maturing body. At 20, he’s still going through the gangly period of figuring out how everything moves and works — an adjustment period that all young athletes go through as they mature. I may be overly optimistic on this score, but I tend to believe that as he “grows into his body” he will regain the command he showed back when he was considered a “pitchability” kid. If that happens, he should grow into a real monster on the mound.
This Season
A carnival atmosphere seemed to surround Harrison’s professional debut. After Baseball America’s proclamation that he was by far the #1 pitching prospect in the system, there was a clamor of anticipation in the Bay Area to see what all the fuss was about. On the first Saturday of the minor league season, an obviously wound up Harrison showed them in an oddly sensational debut.
Harrison was obviously amped up, repeatedly throwing fastballs to the screen and walking or hitting five of the first eight batters he faced. But when he was in the strike zone with either his fastball or slider, he seemed unhittable, striking out seven batters and getting nine swinging strikes. Of the 14 batters he faced that night, only two put balls into play. One of those was a sacrifice bunt. The other grounded a single into right field. Harrison immediately picked him off. It was wild, it was woolly, it was a little crazy, but a lot exciting, and kick started one of the most sensational debut seasons we’ve seen from a Giants’ pitching prospect in many years.
It’s easy to focus on the strikeouts — they are, after all, the most exciting play produced by a pitcher. And they came in bunches: 7 in three innings, 7 in two innings, 8 over 3.2 IP. On June 1, he threw his 80th — and last — pitch of the night at 97 mph to pick up his 6th K. In the seventh start of his career, he hit double digits for the first time against the young Stockton Ports, striking out 10 of the 17 batters he saw in a 4 inning start. The next time out, it was only eight Ks, but that came in a career high 6 innings, during which he allowed just two hits and 0 runs.
But let’s focus on the 0 runs part of that equation for a minute. In 15 of Harrison’s 23 starts this year, he allowed 2 runs or fewer. Six times he walked off the mound without having allowed a single opponent to cross home plate. Now, it’s true that the Giants protected Harrison, limiting his innings and his exposure. They never let him throw 90 pitches, and late in the year backed him off even more — keeping him in the 60-70 pitch range for a few starts in late August. When outings seemed to be going a little sideways on him, they would remove him early. Eight times he was gone before the 4th inning started.
But the fact is, when Harrison was on the mound, he performed. He ultimately led the league in ERA (3.19) as well as strikeouts per 9 (14.3), helping earn him the Low A West Pitcher of the Year honor. That strikeout per 9 number, by the way, was the third highest total for any pitcher who threw 90 innings or more in the minors last year. Strikingly, for a young power pitcher who worked up in the zone, Harrison was fairly immune to the long ball, allowing just three bombs all year. All four of his older rotation mates (Jensen, Ryan Murphy, Carson Ragsdale, and Prelander Berroa) surrendered dingers in the double digits, with Ragsdale and Berroa tying for team lead with 13.
His only real rough patch came in the middle of the season. Over six starts from June 30-July 29, he allowed 18 earned runs — more than half of his earned run total for the season in 26.2 IP. Noticeably, that same period coincided with his worst control of the season (13 walks) and his lowest strikeout rate (just 33 punch-outs, for a K9 of 11.3). It was then that he told me he was searching for his lost arm slot.
His 6.08 ERA in that six game stretch could have indicated that his long first full season was starting to get away from him. But he battled and persevered, and soon enough, he found what he was looking for. Over Harrison’s final seven starts of the year, he hit newfound heights, allowing just three earned runs in 30.2 IP (0.88 ERA), while striking out 55 batters to just 12 walks. In each of his final four starts of the year, he went at least five innings, and allowed 1 or 0 runs. He K’d 37 in that stretch, including a career-high 12 in five shutout innings against Visalia.
As a post-season appearance approached, the competitive Harrison’s biggest concern was that he wouldn’t get to participate. Going into the final week of the season, Harrison was listed as the starter of season finale on Sunday — which meant he wouldn’t get a start in the Low A West Championship Series unless it went to a climactic fifth game. That was leaving just a little too much to chance for Harrison’s comfort. He lobbied the coaching staff to get the all important Game 1 start.
Setting the tone for his teammates, Harrison pitched into the 7th inning for just the second time all year, allowing just one run, and picking up the decision in a 3-1 victory. Fittingly, he struck out the final batter he saw on the year, his sixth K of the game and (unofficially, since post-season stats don’t go on the back of the bubble gum card) his 163rd of the season in just 105 innings (part of San Jose’s minor league leading 1,439 on the year). That fell one K short of equally old MadBum’s first professional season, when the 18-year-old man child struck out 164 in an enormous 141.2 IP.
The Future
I bring up Bumgarner repeatedly because there’s really no one else in 21st century Giants prospecting to whom Harrison compares. Does that necessarily mean that Kyle Harrison is destined for post-season success, Sports Illustrated’s Athlete of the Year honorifics, and a legend that grows larger by the year? No, it doesn’t. And Harrison will almost certainly never hit a ball as far as Madison could.
But Harrison does share several of the key components of Bumgarner’s brilliance at a preternatural young age. He’s a bull-headed, even ornery competitor. As his high school coach says, he pitches with the belief that he is truly better than the hitter he’s facing — even when that hitter is one of the best prospects in the game.
He’s strong enough to absorb innings and to pick up strength through long outings, rather than wear down from them. He’s also smart enough to figure out the best way to beat his opponents. He’s also learned to hide his pitches by tunneling them effectively off of each other. Unlike Bum, however, Harrison also appears to be building into a high velocity power pitcher, just perfect for today’s game.
Does any of that mean he’s going to sky rocket to the majors in his second professional season, before he’s old enough to legally buy himself a drink? Well, no it does not. And almost assuredly, that’s not going to happen. Heck, it was weird at the time, bringing a barely 20-year-old out of Double A up for a few major league innings.
However, like Bumgarner, Harrison will start Year 2 in High A, and I think the chance is there for him to move quickly up to Double A if his performance merits a promotion. Harrison has the stuff to compete in the upper minors and the makeup and emotional maturity as well. The Giants will undoubtedly be looking at the strike throwing component. If that comes together — if he can throw efficiently and go deep into games, while still over-powering lineups and stifling offenses, then it’s possible that he, like Bumgarner, could wave farewell to A ball by Memorial Day. More likely, he’ll spend at least the first half of the season in Eugene working on his game, before getting a second half promotion. That assumes (let me find some convenient wood to knock on) good health and fortune, and it presumes that he strikes up a better, more consistent relationship with the strike zone. Perhaps he and strike zone decide to go steady, he settles down and decides he doesn’t want to fool around with “high and outside” anymore.
If that part of his game comes together, then look out world, there’s no telling how fast this kid could move. As I said at the top, we’re into the foundational pieces now. Hoping for best case development out of pitching prospects is always a recipe for getting your plans smashed to smithereens. But if this foundational piece should go in true, the Giants will have gone a long way towards that perpetual competitiveness machine they’re hoping to erect.
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Amazing write-up Roger, as every single one of these are! I got to see Harrison pitch against Visalia last season and I thought that staring down his fastball might just be one of the most uncomfortable experiences I can imagine on a field- I could have sworn I heard Geno’s glove sizzling after a couple in a row. When he snaps a good one off, it legitimately looks like it’s coming up-and-in to lefties, which I find equal parts amazing and just hilariously absurd. That’s why I’m so hyped to hear about him working with that two-seam change-up grip, it’s the cambio shape that should really mesh well with his arm slot. If he gets it right, I can’t wait to see the swings he’ll get when he has two pitches that tunnel off his fastball, yet break in completely opposite directions of both the fastball (vertically) and each other (horizontally).