Deciphering the mystery of Harrisball

Michael Harris II won't "just walk more"— but that's probably okay

I recently wrote about how Michael Harris II quietly took a major step forward offensively in 2023. What I didn’t mention was that his walk rate went from abysmal in 2022 to, well, let’s call it abysmal-er in 2023. Michael Harris II would like to walk about as much as a child who’s been at Disney World for seven hours and realizes his parents will carry him if he cries loudly enough.

Many fans see this as a solvable problem. “Harris is already such a good hitter,” they say. “So imagine what will happen if he just walk more!”

For the sake of this piece, let’s put aside that Statcast actually thinks Harris II let too many pitches go down the middle of the plate last year and was pretty good in the chase and waste zones. Let’s just look at other hitters like Michael Harris II and see if any of them ever do “just walk more”.

Finding a peer group

The group of players that interests me is players who have demonstrated a repeatable ability to hit well while drawing walks at a poor rate. Many hitters can put together a single good season (see 2018 Johan Camargo) but in the words of a wise woman, that don’t impress me much. I’m similarly unmoved by zero-tool hitters; it’s not fascinating that Nicky Lopez doesn’t walk at a high rate, because he also doesn’t hit the ball hard or for average. No, I want hitters who have a track record of being good enough in terms of average and power to offset atrocious walk rates. Let’s call it Harrisball.

I found every hitter since 2000 who has had multiple Harrisball seasons (min. 300 PA, wRC+ over 100, walk rate under 5 percent) other than the man himself.

There are only 29 players since the turn of the century other than Michael Harris II who have put together multiple seasons of Harrisball. For perspective, 1,457 players have accumulated at least 600 PAs in that time. This is a weird, special group.

And they’re diverse. They range from “if you told me you made him up, I wouldn’t doubt you for a second” (sorry, Kenji Johjima) to Hall of Very Good (Cano, Hunter, Soriano) and Hall of Fame (Rodriguez, likely Ichiro) inductees.

I intentionally left the wRC+ limit at 100 to get as wide a group of players as possible, in part because I didn’t anyone to think I was playing fast and loose with the FanGraphs filters to try to put Harris II alone in a category with, say, Cano or Soriano. It also helped to provide a decently sized sample for the next part.

Figuring out if they ever walk

So we’ve got this group of clearly talented hitters with one flaw in their profile. Many of these players were franchise cornerstones or at least of long-term interest to their clubs. If there was a way to improve their walk rate without sacrificing the rest of their profile, their coaches had every incentive to try it.

So did it work? The MLB walk rate has hovered around 8.5% since 2000. I found the career-best full season for each of these repeat Harrisballers.

Of our Harrisball 29 (trademark pending), a grand total of eight had a single season in which they posted an above-average walk rate. So the other 21 went their whole - in many cases, long - careers without even once notching an above-average walk total. And zero players on this list had even close to a league-average career walk rate.

So none of these hitters ever did sustainably ‘just walk more’. Not the fringe major leaguers; not the future Hall of Famers.

What it means for Michael Harris II

So we have a good bit of data that tells us that above-average hitters who are good at everything but walking just don’t ever really learn to walk. Unless you think Harris II can unlock something that the likes of Robinson Cano and Alfonso Soriano couldn’t, it would be pure hope to think he’d do any better.

But as Cano and Soriano show, you can be a great hitter despite not walking much if you make the most of the rest of your plate appearances - hit the ball extremely hard and at optimal angles and cut down strikeouts. As I’ve previously written, Harris II did both of those things in 2023. In doing so, he took a step from “average hitter hitting over his head” to “well-above average hitter slightly dinged by bad luck”. Luis Robert Jr. and Bo Bichette stand out as likely to join the Harrisball family in 2024; both have had one Harris-ian season and have the track record for another. Two of the young stars of the game aren’t bad company. Add in the fact that Harris plays a plus center field and steals bases, and you can see an extremely solid floor even if the lack of walks eventually catch up to him.

Even just looking at Michael Harris II the hitter, though, there’s plenty to like. And sure, he’s young and hungry and perhaps his offensive skillset will continue to mature. For perspective, the Braves’ only legit upper-minors outfield prospect (Jesse Franklin V) is two years older - and three Roman numerals grander - than Harris II. But offensive profiles come at a tradeoff. If you want Harris II trying to get into deep counts that might result in walks, you’ll also pay the price when he spits on early-count pitches he could crush. And more deep counts means more two-strike counts, which means more strikeouts. The Braves should like him the way he is.

Maybe with time, Michael Harris II will do what 29 players before him couldn’t: turn “good hitter despite not walking” into “good hitter, can walk”. But so long as it remains impossible to walk into a LASIK facility and say, “Give me whatever Juan Soto has,” we can only expect so much from his eye. If his early-career results are indicative of who he is, that’s a concession the Braves will happily make.

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