Can Josh Harrison ride an excellent September into 2016?

Josh Harrison had a good 2015 season overall, book-ended by two very different months. Can he use a good finish to 2015 as a springboard into 2016?

Josh Harrison struggled out of the gate in 2015, but after the first month of the season – when arguably every regular Pirates position player struggled – he put together some solid months sandwiched by the time lost to his thumb injury.

Here’s a look at Harrison’s production by month last season:

I don’t particularly enjoy having to use .BABIP (batting average on balls in play) as reasoning for a hitter’s struggles. At the same time, it’s particular hard to ignore that Harrison’s .BABIP for his outlier month was a paltry .242. It’s not as if Harrison wasn’t hitting the ball hard enough. Fangraphs lists his hard hit percentage for the month of April at 29.7 percent. The balls that were hit were simply not finding the grass.

On the other end of the spectrum is Harrison’s lucky September/October, where 41.1 percent of his batted balls resulted in a hit. That’s an incredibly high number,

What was the difference between those two months that may have had Harrison find some better luck? Did he do anything of his own volition that helped him “make his own luck?”

Looking a bit deeper, he managed a slight increase in his walk percentage between the two months. While only drawing six free passes for a month may not seem to be a difference-making increase, it is for Harrison. Long known as a hitter who puts the ball in play rather than both striking out or taking a walk, Harrison increased his rate from a 2.3 percent in April to 6.3 percent in September/October.

In doing anything that can change a pitcher’s approach to him, even slightly, Harrison can get better balls to drive, as seen by his 38.6 percent line drive rate on “hard” pitches in the last two months of the year.

Harrison would do well to continue being at least somewhat selective. In doing so, he could guard against a slow start and use the lessons learned late in 2015 to catapult him into a comeback 2016 campaign.

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