When the A’s selected third baseman Brett Harris out of Gonzaga in the seventh round of last year’s draft, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a fairly uninspired selection.* Selected with the 218th pick in the draft, Harris was not among MLB.com’s top 250 prospects last year, reflected by his agreeing to sign for $120,000, below the pick’s $200,000 slot value. That was a lower bonus than Oakland’s 11th-14th round picks received. From a distance, it looked like the low bonus was a key part of drafting Harris (and perhaps it was): he was a college senior with no leverage, enabling the A’s to save a bit of money on the pick and go over slot with their prior three selections.
*Fairly uninspired in the abstract, i.e., that Harris probably wasn’t one of the 218 best players in the draft. Whether picking someone in that spot to save money to go after Denzel Clarke, Grant Holman, etc. is a good strategy is a different question.
Being a senior was a key factor in Harris’ lack of notoriety in the first place, because he was actually a fifth-year senior, having redshirted his freshman year at Houston, transferred to Central Arizona for his redshirt freshman year, then spent three years at Gonzaga. All that time meant that when he was drafted on July 13, 2021, he was already 23 years and 19 days old: older than all but ten of the 217 players picked before him (and the oldest player in the A’s entire 20-player class), and already over half a year older than the average High-A hitter. Plus, he was a third baseman who hit all of twelve homers in four college seasons. Granted, one of those was the shortened 2020 season, but it’s hard to have much excitement about an old corner infielder without over-the-fence pop.
The rays of hope on Harris’ profile when he was drafted were two: first, he was West Coast Conference Defensive Player of the Year in 2021; second, he had a banner senior season, hitting .350 with more walks than strikeouts and half of those 12 career homers.
After giving him two games in Rookie ball to get oriented, the A’s–perhaps mindful of Harris’ advanced age–opted to throw him straight into the deep end of High-A Lansing for the rest of the 2021 season. He performed much as you’d expect a guy with his profile to perform: he played a good third base, moonlighted in the middle infield occasionally, and was adequate but unspectacular in the batter’s box, hitting .222/.323/.370. That was good for a 95 wRC+, so give Harris credit for hanging in with the aggressive assignment, but it was hard to really get excited about the performance.
When Harris was reassigned to Lansing to start 2022, what I wanted to watch for was whether he would be able to add some distinctiveness to what had appeared to be a fairly vanilla offensive profile. In his pro debut, he had taken a few walks, hadn’t struck out at a massive clip, and had launched three homers in 25 High-A games, so he hadn’t shown any fatal flaws, but he also hadn’t shown anything resembling a carrying offensive skill.
Fast forward to today, and the lack of glaring flaws remains, but suddenly everything looks to be on the table as a potential carrying offensive skill for Harris. He’s hitting .316/.429/.602 in his return engagement with Lansing, and has the fourth-highest wOBA (.451) and wRC+ (186) in the Midwest League. He’s already launched seven long balls this year in just 28 games, and he’s walked only one fewer time than he’s struck out. And, oh yeah, he’s still a plus defender at third base. Age aside, this looks on paper like the definition of a breakout season, and it naturally raises the typical questions such seasons raise: Is he legit? What kind of player does he project as? Where might he fit on future A’s teams? I’ve watched most of Harris’ at-bats this season and have charted 393 of the 506 pitches he’s seen, so I’d like to think I’m in a decent position, both in an eye-test sense and a data sense, to take an early crack at those questions.
Let’s start by talking about Harris’ defense. He is indeed a plus defender at third, verging on a 65-grade glove at the position. Last season, my loose comparable for Harris was former A’s third baseman Jack Hannahan, who was a top-5 3B defender in the late ‘00s but didn’t quite hit enough to remain a viable starter. Like Hannahan, Harris’ defensive excellence is driven by his ability to make very quick reads off the bat, a terrific first step, and great body control that allows him to accurately dive for the ball to both sides. He’s got an above-average arm, though he’s had occasional bouts with throwing inaccuracy that are common for young left-side infield defenders; these should get cleaned up in time because his internal clock is so good.
You’ll notice that all of those positives are attributes that play especially well at the hot corner: what Harris isn’t is a speedster who can run down grounders eight steps away from him. As such, though his reflexes and savvy make him a capable second baseman as well, his glove is much more ordinary when deployed at an up-the-middle position.* We ordinarily think of players like Harris–plus defenders at corner positions who historically are a little light on power–as guys who would be better served moving to the middle of the diamond if possible, but the way Harris’ defensive skillset works points toward third base being his most valuable defensive position despite his adequacy elsewhere. The defensive acumen there basically means Harris is going to have MLB value if he’s a league-average offensive player.
*Just as a note, Oakland’s more highly-touted third base draftee from last year, Zack Gelof, *does* have that long-range tracking ability, and might actually project to be a better defender at second than his original third base, where he’s had some trouble throwing. Gelof’s range also makes the A’s decision to start giving him some CF reps a sensible one.
At the plate, Harris’ biggest virtue is probably his simplicity. That might seem an odd proclamation at first glance, because he sets up in a very spread-out stance with his hands unusually out in front of his right shoulder, but his swing and approach are clean and straightforward. Harris eschews a pronounced legkick in favor of a balanced toe-tap, and he has worked to shorten his swing, looking noticeably more direct to the ball this season than he was in his pro debut, where he had a slight bat wrap and a loopier swing path. If anything, the unusual starting position of his hands seem to prime him to stay shorter to the ball than most guys his size. This shortness has allowed him to consistently make contact with pitches in all parts of the zone–he’s only swung and missed 27 times in the 393 pitches I’ve tracked, good for a 6.87% SwStr%.
Part of that low number is also driven by Harris’ solid batting eye and pitch recognition, clearly evidenced by his strong walk rate. He does have a disciplined approach and consistently works deep counts (4.25 pitches per plate appearance this season), which isn’t particularly common in a player that makes contact on such a high percentage of his swings. He’s swung at just 43.76% of pitches in my charting, a couple ticks below average: 57.55% in the zone and just 15.38% outside of it.* He does swing pretty hard, and his power comes more from his strength and leverage than anything mechanical about his swing.
*Standard disclaimer: I’m sure my charting of what’s in vs. out of the zone isn’t 100% accurate. Still, this gives you an idea of the plate discipline Harris has. He has the lowest O-Swing% of any hitter on the Lansing team (one would hope my charting is at least relatively consistent with itself, right?), and though his Z-Swing% is second lowest (by a fraction of a percent to Marty Bechina), he also has the highest Z-Swing/O-Swing ratio on the team–which has struck out the second-fewest times of any Midwest League outfit this year, so they're not exactly a group of hackers.
If there’s a weakness apparent in Harris’ game at the High-A level, it’s probably that he has had some trouble making contact with breaking balls. He’s swung at them less than he has at pitches in general (as is often the case), offering at just 41 of 133 (30.83%), but 16 of those 41 swings have come up empty, compared to just 11 of his other 131 cuts.* Just one of his seven homers has come off a breaker–the other six were fastballs–and breaking balls were also responsible for just seven of the 29 balls I’ve coded Harris as hitting hard. He’s obviously got some ability to recognize spin, and 7/29 is actually commensurate with the proportion of his swings that are against breaking balls in the first place, so he’s workable against bendy stuff, but his swing does get a bit loopier down in the zone, and he’s been occasionally vulnerable pulling off stuff away from him. None of his seven homers have come on pitches in the bottom third of the zone, and only one was on the outer third–the short swing is more geared to get to stuff up and/or in quickly and yank it to the pull side.
*Of course, breaking balls miss bats at a higher clip than other pitches, but you'd normally expect the rate to be around doubled, not quadrupled like this.
Of course, you know any statistical analysis of Harris’ performance is going to look fairly positive, because why would we be talking about a nearly-24-year-old corner infielder in High-A if he hadn’t grabbed everyone’s attention with his statline? Should we really be throwing out a bunch of superlatives about a guy who’s just beating up on younger competition?
Well, obviously it’s fair to deduct some credit from Harris’ statline because of his age, but honestly, I wasn’t sure how much, which inspired the giant rabbit hole I went down about age relative to level this week. And, to make the (extremely) long story short on that, Harris’ age isn’t really that disqualifying. Players like Matt Carpenter and Brian Dozier carved out excellent MLB careers when starting at a similar place, and my math gave a batter with Harris’ High-A performance* at age 24 just a shade under a 50% chance to at least make it to the major leagues. Throw in Harris’ strong defense, this being just his first full pro season (my analysis showed that we should consider a 24-year-old in his first full year as equivalent to a 23-year-old in his fourth full year), and the fact that he’s an exceptionally young 24–just a week older than the standard July 1 age cutoff–and you could make a decent case that he’s actually got over a 50/50 shot to stand in an MLB batter’s box at least once. Jack Hannahan’s career is starting to move toward Harris’ median possible outcome rather than his upside.
*The major caveat here is that that calculation was done with mostly end-of-season data, and you’d probably expect Harris to not maintain his wRC+ of 186 for the whole season. Then again, his BABIP is a reasonable .333, so we’re not dealing with some sort of mirage statline that’s destined to come crashing back to earth.
Needless to say, the season, and Harris’ career, are in their early stages, and he’ll have to prove that he can respond when pitchers adjust to him as the season wears on. The jump to Double-A, whenever that comes (perhaps when Max Schuemann or Zack Gelof inevitably heads to Las Vegas?), will also be a huge test for Harris. The early signs of his progress couldn’t possibly be much better, though, and if he keeps this up, Harris will be a strong contender to move into Oakland’s top 15 or 20 prospects by midseason. So much for being an uninspired cost-cutting draft pick.
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