This story was excerpted from Mark Bowman’s Braves Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox. This edition was written by Jason Foster.
Michael Harris II is off to the best start of his career and is a big reason why the Braves have jumped out to MLB's best record (40-20) and have a nine-game lead atop the NL East. It's been a pleasant development for him after disappointing offensive seasons in 2024 and '25.
But what's been the secret to Harris' turnaround after a combined .697 OPS the past two seasons? Turns out, it's not so much one thing as it is a mix of a few things working together. And spoiler: It's not because he's chasing fewer bad pitches. More on that in a bit.
For starters, a look at Harris' Baseball Savant page shows he's hitting the ball harder than ever and producing hard contact at an elite level compared to the rest of MLB. Not only was his 54.9% hard-hit rate in baseball's 97th percentile entering Sunday, but entering the weekend, his blast rate -- the percentage of balls he squares up with a high bat speed -- was at 19.1%, the highest in the Major Leagues.
But why is Harris hitting the ball so much harder this season? A few things stand out. One, he's opened his stance significantly, going from 18 degrees in 2025 to 26 degrees this season. That's allowed him to see the ball better and get to inside pitches easier. Two, Harris has moved up in the box by about 18 inches, allowing him to make contact farther in front of the plate than he has in previous seasons. Three, his average bat speed has increased to 75 mph and his fast-swing rate has jumped to 50% from 40.7% last season.
So, if you want to reduce it to a simple formula, it might look like this: Wider stance + moving up in the box + faster swing = making more contact in front of the plate and driving balls with more authority.
Another thing that's helped: Harris is barreling a lot more offspeed and breaking pitches. His 21.3% barrel rate on those pitches entering Sunday was the fifth-best mark in the Majors, grouped with mega-mashers such as Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber. Last year, Harris' barrel rate on those pitches was just 8 percent, which ranked 164th.
Even with these improvements, Harris continues to chase non-strikes. In fact, his chase rate (44.9%) is higher than ever. But with all those other changes, he's had much better results when he makes contact on a chase pitch. Entering Sunday, he was hitting .439 and slugging .634 this season when he put a ball in play on a pitch out of the zone, compared to just .230/.294 from 2024-25.
Harris enters June hitting .307 with 13 homers, 36 RBIs and an .868 OPS. If he can maintain these results for the next several months, he'll finish with more than 30 homers and nearly 100 RBIs, both of which would easily be career highs. Not only that, it would signal that Harris has taken a seemingly permanent step forward to become the MVP-level player the Braves have long predicted.