NORTH PORT, Fla. -- Now that Michael Harris II has drawn a walk in nearly 15 percent of his Grapefruit League plate appearances, is it time to confidently predict this will be the year he becomes an All-Star or maybe even an MVP candidate?
“Since the first time I really saw him play, I’ve said [Harris] is one of the most talented people on the field every time he steps out there,” Braves first baseman Matt Olson said. "You watch batting practice and he has some of the best pop on the team. He can hit bad pitches and he’s one of the best center fielders I’ve played with. I think he could do something really special.”
How about a 30-30 season? That certainly seems possible. In fact, there was some expectation that the 2022 NL Rookie of the Year was going to join this club last year. He might have had he not entered the All-Star break with an MLB-worst .551 OPS. Still, even with that horrific first half, he ended with 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases.
“I think he’s swing decisions away from being a star,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “He’s already a star defensively. He hits the ball extremely hard. It's just forcing pitchers into the zone, which is going to help him take that next step.”
Spring Training stats don’t matter, right? But occasionally, these small sample sizes will indicate a trend that carries into the regular season. So, yeah, it’s encouraging that Harris entered Saturday with a 14.8 percent walk rate (four in 27 plate appearances). He walked just 2.5 percent (16 in 641 PAs) of the time during the 2025 regular season. That’s the 13th-lowest rate recorded in a season (min. 500 PAs) since 2000.
To put this in context, going back to the start of this century, no player with a walk rate of 2.5 percent or lower has produced an above-average Weighted Runs Created Plus (anything above 100) in the same season. Just six players within this same span have had a 100 wRC+ or better while producing a walk rate between 2.6-2.9 percent in a season.
“[Plate discipline] is one of the main things I want to work on right now,” Harris said. “It’s one of the bigger things that will help elevate my game and help this team a lot. So, my focus now is making sure I’m swinging at pitches I can handle.”
Here is a look at what Harris has done this spring in comparison to last season (entering Saturday):
Percentage of swings vs. pitches in the strike zone:
• 2026 Spring Training: 62.5% (25 of 40)
• 2025: 71.3% (761 of 1068)
Pct. of swings vs. pitches outside the strike zone
• 2026 ST: 26% (13 of 50)
• 2025: 43.1% (476 of 1105)
To put this in perspective, Ozzie Albies had the second-highest outside-the-zone swing rate among Braves players at 33.5 percent last year. Or maybe it’s best to just point out that Harris ranked with Jake Mangum, Javier Báez and Yainer Diaz as the only MLB players in the bottom one percent in chase rate.
“He’s been swinging at good pitches and having some really good takes this spring,” Olson said. “You've seen the incredible athleticism. If he can kind of just take that next step with pitch recognition -- that’s the stuff that comes with years.”
This will be Harris’ fifth year at the Major League level. But it will also be just his sixth full season since graduating from suburban Atlanta’s Stockbridge High School. He played 53 games after being drafted in 2019. After the 2020 season was canceled by COVID, Harris spent the 2021 season at the High-A level. So when he was called up less than two months into the following season, he had played just 43 games at the Double-A level.
Fast-tracking to the Majors has led to some growing pains. But Harris has shown some resiliency. He altered his batting stance around the All-Star break last year by raising his hands to where they’d been most of his life. The change created immediate benefits.
Harris ranked third among qualifiers with a 1.139 OPS from July 18 to Aug. 19. He then had an ugly .311 OPS over his next 22 games from Aug. 20 to Sept. 13. But just when it looked like he was destined to end on a down note, he constructed a .968 OPS over his final 14 games.
Will the combination of last year’s mechanical changes and the recent improved plate discipline lead to a big year?
“I really like where he’s at right now,” Weiss said.