Yesterday, we looked at the recent struggle of Andrew McCutchen, particularly how he’s not getting the explosiveness to turn on line drives like he usually does. Today, we’ll focus on the other vital but currently worrisome piece of the Pirates’ offense: Josh Harrison.
Like McCutchen, the 2014 All-Star is off to an incredibly sluggish start, batting .175/.213/.291 in his first 25 games of the season. Unlike McCutchen, maybe you were waiting for this to happen, or at least wondering if it would happen — can J-Hay really repeat his unbelievable 2014?
Harrison hit everything last year, en route to a 5-WAR season and eventually a contract extension to remain in Pittsburgh through at least 2018.
The only thing he couldn’t hit? The slider.
Consider some of these numbers from 2014: Harrison swung and missed on 16.9% of all sliders (and nearly 1 of every 3 swings on a slider was a whiff), more than any other pitch besides the splitter (which he only saw 32 times). While he boasted one of the best line drive rates on the team, the pitch he converted into a liner the least often was, in fact, the slider at just 17.4% per ball in play. And here were his results against all different pitch types…
He couldn’t hit the slider — basically the only thing he couldn’t touch. The .224 batting average on balls in play makes some sense considering his low rate of line drives against the pitch. A lot of sliders he put into play were ground balls to the left side or fly balls to mid-outfield:
So why not exploit that? After he annihilated every form of fastball – cutter, fourseam, sinker – it would be a no-brainer for opponents to go with the breaking ball (especially the one that mimics the fastball out of the pitcher’s hand).
Harrison’s getting a slider about 20% of the time this season, up from 17% a year ago. And he still can’t hit it: according to Brooks Baseball, he’s 0-for-15 with seven strikeouts against the offering. A whopping 40% of his swings vs. the slider have resulted in a whiff, by far his worst against any pitch. Further, 62.5% of his slider balls in play have resulted in ground balls and only 12.5% in line drives, making for a lot of easy outs.
Here’s the location of what he’s up against:
He’s taking a good amount of sliders for balls, but he’s also not getting much solid contact with so many fouls. Most are thrown low and away, which is typical (breaking away from a right-hander), and that’s where he’s whiffing.
The few sliders he’s put into play have been mostly grounders to the left side, like last year:
From a career perspective, it’s always given him trouble:
Clearly, there are red flags surrounding this player right now. His refusal to walk has always been a problem, and it’s even more obvious when he’s struggling to find hits. His seventh inning walk on Thursday night was his first in 89 plate appearances dating back to April 10th.
But unlike last season, the hits aren’t dropping in. J-Hay has just one hit in his last 30 at-bats, with a .195 BABIP that is so far removed from the .353 mark he posted a year ago. His line drive rate is down 4%, hard-hit rate is down 4%, soft-hit rate is up 5%.
The slider was the only pitch he couldn’t handle last season, and he’s yet to hit it in 2015. Opponents are probably aware of that, and it only makes sense to exploit it. It’s too early to write off Josh Harrison, but the man looks lost at the plate right now.
Cutch turned on a nice line drive last night after I wrote about that, so hopefully J-Hay does something against a slider (or anything) this weekend.
Go Bucs
The post The Pitch That Josh Harrison Can’t Hit appeared first on From Forbes to Federal.
