The first half of the 2025 season wasn’t too kind to Braves center fielder Michael Harris II, whose offensive production cratered. In 93 games before the All-Star break, Harris posted the worst OPS (.551) of all qualified hitters, hit for zero power (.317 SLG), and produced a meager 47 wRC+. Among 253 hitters to take at least 200 plate appearances in that span, only Michael Massey and Brenton Doyle fared worse.
But baseball is a game of adjustments, and it’s hard for a player of Harris’s caliber -- he sports a career .770 OPS -- to be that bad for that long. So, naturally, Harris has followed a dreadful first half with an astounding five-week stretch. Entering Atlanta’s game on Friday against the Mets, Harris has a 1.114 OPS in 32 games since the break; he’s demolishing the baseball (.718 SLG) and has the fifth-highest wRC+ (207) among 221 hitters with at least 80 plate appearances in the second half. As Braves manager Brian Snitker said on Tuesday -- after Harris walloped his 10th home run since the break, one more than Cal Raleigh -- Harris has been “the hottest player on the planet for a while.”
Somehow, even Snitker’s description is downplaying the worst-to-first tale that Harris is authoring. For historical context, let's look at the pool of hitters in any season with a) at least 100 plate appearances after the All-Star break and b) at least 400 plate appearances over the whole season. This takes us back to 1933, when the first All-Star Game took place.
Within that group, here’s where Harris ranks in terms of the difference between a player’s second-half OPS and their season-long OPS.
Largest difference between 2nd-half OPS and season-long OPS, since 1933
- Michael Harris II, 2025 Braves -- 409 points (1.114 OPS vs. .705 OPS)
- Barry Bonds, 1994 Giants -- 316 points
- José Ramírez, 2019 Guardians -- 299 points
- Melvin Mora, 2008 Orioles -- 247 points
- Jeff Bagwell, 1994 Astros -- 245 points
Since 1933, no one -- no one! -- has a larger difference between their second-half OPS and their season-long OPS than Harris in 2025. And that doesn’t even tell the whole story, because Harris has gone from ice cold to scorching hot. Bonds, for example, just went from red hot (1.073 1st-half OPS) to white hot (1.389 2nd-half OPS), in typical Bonds fashion.
So, what’s happened here? How is Harris doing this?
Well, before we get into some of the under-the-hood changes -- and there are a few of them -- it’s important to establish what’s not happening. For one, Harris hasn’t changed much with his approach; he’s still swinging at just about everything. His zone-swing rate is up by six percentage points, and he’s chasing at a higher clip (+2.7 points) since the break, too. In fact, Harris has an active 22-game streak without drawing a single walk -- yet has rapped out a stunning 36 hits over that span. He’s the first player to record that many hits without a walk in a 22-game span since then-Phillies outfielder Ben Revere in 2014.
And yet, Harris continues to rake. If you’re swinging as often as Harris is, it stands to reason that you need to make exceptional contact to be successful, and that is part of the calculus here.
Harris's batted ball profile, 1st half vs. 2nd half
GB%: 54.5% vs. 40.4%
Airball%: 45.5% vs. 59.6%
Harris is transformed: No longer is he running the ninth-highest ground ball rate among qualified hitters. He’s also hitting the ball harder (+12.8 points), and since that contact isn’t going into the ground nearly as much, he’s more than doubled his barrel rate, from 6.1% to 13.6%.
This all sounds simple, until you realize there’s not a button Harris could press to simply fix everything overnight. The Braves identified a potential remedy a while ago. Here’s what hitting coach Tim Hyers had to say about Harris back on June 30:
“I think if he can hold his posture, clean up a few things mechanically and then get back to getting balls in the strike zone, I think this thing can turn around in a heartbeat,” Hyers said.
Harris took a stab at the first two buckets -- posture and mechanics -- on the Braves’ six-game road trip to face the A's and the Cardinals just before the break. On the plane ride out west, Harris reviewed film of his old batting stance. He spent the next six games experimenting, raising the pre-pitch positioning of his hands, and trying to get comfortable.
“He made some swing adjustments in his setup, he needed to,” Snitker said on Aug. 16. “He wasn’t going anywhere [or] doing what he needed to do. … Sometimes guys are resistant to change, and he did a good job of being open to that.”
In addition to the raised hands, Harris has opened his stance, going from 11 degrees to 28 degrees over the course of the season. Really, Harris looks like a different hitter and, as Snitker said, “he looks like he’s in a better position to hit.” The changes are fairly easy to see with the naked eye. Below, on the left, you can see an at-bat from April; on the right, you can see an at-bat from earlier this week.
If it looks natural, it’s because it is. Coming up through the Minors, Harris held his hands in a similarly elevated position. In his first week in the Majors, former Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer suggested lowering his hands; Harris took off, winning NL Rookie of the Year honors, so there wasn’t any need to revert back. But a few years later, drastic struggles warranted an overhaul.
“Going back to a natural spot was the easiest thing for me to do because all I’ve known my whole life was to have my hands up,” Harris said. “I guess it got me a more direct swing. I see pitches better.”
Now we’re onto something. Harris tells us what the adjustments did -- he sees pitches better -- and one way we can measure that is by seeing how he fares on pitches over the plate. That’s what Hyers was talking about when he said Harris needed to get back to “getting balls in the strike zone.” It’s not about receiving more strikes; it’s about doing damage with the strikes that you get.
Harris vs. in-zone pitches, 1st half vs. 2nd half
1st half: .269 BA // .410 SLG // 12.8% whiff rate
2nd half: .456 BA // .900 SLG // 7.1% whiff rate
Since the All-Star break, no one has a higher batting average against pitches in the zone than Harris (min. 80 PA); only two players have a higher slugging percentage on those pitches. As Ben Clemens of FanGraphs explained earlier this week, Harris isn’t only mashing pitches in the zone -- he’s clobbering center-cut contact, which consist of the best pitches to hit.
“In the middle of the season, it’s tough to make that kind of adjustment,” Harris said. “But you can’t be scared to do it, especially when you’re not getting the results you want and it’s not really helping the team. So I took the risk, and it’s paying off.”
It certainly is, even though his Herculean effort may be too little, too late for the Braves, still 9 1/2 games out of the third NL Wild Card spot. But the reemergence of Harris is a key development for the future. He signed an eight-year contract extension in August 2022, and a pair of club options could keep him with the Braves through the 2032 season. Harris plays exceptional defense -- he’s posted 90th percentile Outs Above Average or better in each of his first four seasons, per Statcast -- so the bat doesn’t necessarily have to be elite for Harris to be one of the game’s great center fielders.
As the Braves try to return to form next season, Harris figures to play an essential part. Even if he's not “the hottest player on the planet,” he’s at least proven that his first-half struggles weren’t sustainable, either.