PIttsubrgh Pirates Keep or Trade – Josh Harrison 

Last week in our “Keep or Trade” series, we looked at the shortstop position and the Pittsburgh Pirates’ starter Jordy Mercer.  This week we will complete our review of the infield by examining second baseman Josh Harrison.

As with past reviews, our goal is to ultimately answer the question “should the Pittsburgh Pirates keep him or trade him?”

Shifting into Second

Josh Harrison floated around the Pirates organization as a utility player until August of 2014 when Pedro Alvarez’ move to first base allowed Harrison to become an everyday third baseman.  This turned out to be a breakout season for Jay Hay as he hit for a slash line of .315/.347/.490 on his way to posting the second best batting average in the National League.   His defense at third base also drew rave reviews and combined with his performance at the plate, earned him a spot at the 2014 All-Star game.  The recognition – some would say hype – led to a contract extension in April of 2015 and gave the Pirates a bona fide second baseman to replace the soon-to-be-traded Neil Walker.  During that magical 2014 season, Harrison cranked out 13 home runs and stole 18 bases as the Pirates primary leadoff man.  A very solid performance for a former utility player.

One-hit Wonder?

However, after the 2014 season, Harrison’s hitting regressed back to what appears to be his overall skill level.  Harrison posted slash lines of .287/.327/.390 and .283/.311/.388 in the 2015 and 2016 seasons.   In 2016, he had an on-and-off year at the plate.  He started strong with a .329 batting average through the end of May, but suffered through an abysmal June where he hit .198 and did not have a hit in half of the games in which he played.  Overall, he was the 5^th best second baseman in the National League (out of 11 qualified players) when it came to batting average, however, he ranked 10^th in OBP and 8^th in slugging percentage.

It does appear that Harrison’s career batting average of .284 is what the Pittsburgh Pirates can expect from him in general.  Also, his career slugging percentage of .410 is probably indicative of future performance.  ZiPS seems to agree and projects Harrison at .279/.316/.403.  The area where it seems like Harrison could improve greatly is his career OBP of .316.  Harrison ranked dead last among all qualified NL hitters with only 18 free passes in 2016.  Harrison almost never walks and has been known to swing at a lot of pitches outside of the strike zone.  His O-swing percent (percentage of pitches outside the strike zone at which he swings) is 37.7 percent, well above the league average of ~30 percent.  This is only tolerable because he is adept at putting the bat on the ball, even when the pitch seems to be unreachable.  Most times, this generates weak contact and although some drop in for hits, most end up as foul balls or easy outs.  His career batting average on balls in play (BAbip) of .314 is in line with the rest of the league which shows he does not get more than his fair share of weak hits (for comparison, Starling Marte’s BAbip of .359 indicates more than his fair share of weak contact hits).

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]It does appear that Harrison’s career batting average of .284 is what you can expect from him in general.[/perfectpullquote]

As we’ve discussed before here at Pirates Breakdown, Josh Harrison does have a hidden talent.  His career performance as a leadoff hitter is much better than his overall stat line.  His career batting average in the #1 spot is an impressive .308.  This is spread across 877 plate appearances and is therefore not a small sample size fluke.  Harrison’s OBP in the #1 spot is .344 and almost 40 percent of his stolen bases come when batting in this position.   Some players thrive on hitting in a particular place in the order and the data suggests that Harrison thrives on hitting first.

Defense Range Second to None

Harrison plays great defense at second base.  He made only 7 errors in 2016 for a fielding percentage of .989, better than the league average of .982.  However, his real value comes from his lateral range.  He had the 4th best Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) among NL second basemen according to FanGraphs.  Inside Edge Fielding tracks how often a player gets to batted balls with various levels of difficulty.  The two most difficult categories are Remote, where an average player will make the play only 1-10 percent of the time, and Unlikely 10-40 percent of the time.  Harrison gets to the Remote category of batted balls 15.8 percent of the time.  The other ten qualified NL second baseman all have a zero in this column.  That’s right – Harrison is the only qualified second baseman that can field a “remote” ball.  In the Unlikely category, Harrison is at 53.9 percent and he and Jean Segura of the Arizona Diamondbacks are the only players at their position over 25 percent.  Harrison has amazing defensive range.

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Harrison is the only qualified second baseman that can field a “remote” ball. [/perfectpullquote]

If there is a hole in Harrison’s defense it is in turning the double play, especially on the 6-4-3 throw to first.  Josh has a -0.6 Double Play Runs-above-average (DPR) rating, which puts him in the bottom half of his peers.  Most second basemen have lopsided error numbers when comparing fielding to throwing.  Not so for Josh – he has almost as many errors throwing to first as he does fielding.  And this does not count the numerous errant one hoppers that David Freese and John Jaso scooped up for him.  This is something he needs to improve on to become a truly elite defender.

Of course, the story with Harrison is never strictly limited to on the field matters. What about his intangibles?

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING…