Sunday Notes: Kyle Harrison’s Repertoire is Coming Along Well
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. Which brings us to his other breaking ball. When we’d talked in Portland, the lefty called the pitch a sweepy slider. Savant categorizes it as a slurve.
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