Two walks for Michael Harris II and Braves fans can dare to dream

In 12 plate appearances through Sunday, he has walked twice, which for Harris is a windfall of bases on balls.

Granted, it’s spring training and one of the walks was against a minor leaguer. And although the other was issued by reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes, it was one of four free passes he handed out in 2⅓ innings.

So it wasn’t like Harris was some kind of thief cracking a vault lock, equal parts savvy and guile.

Regardless, it may not be everything, but it’s something.

This is a player who set a club record for position players by going 178 consecutive plate appearances without a walk.

And given that Harris appears entrenched at center field — which he defends with aplomb — and is coming off a season in which he was abysmal at the plate for about the first three-fifths of the season, scalding for the next fifth and then subpar for the final fifth, Braves fans would like to have anything to latch on to.

And so two walks it is.

Let’s hear what Harris had to say.

“I felt like (the two walks) just happened,” Harris told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and somewhere over CoolToday Park, a crestfallen balloon started slowly descending back to earth.

But there was more.

Harris went on to say he is working on being more selective. In early at-bats, he said, he is picking a spot in the zone where he can be aggressive and not swinging if the pitch isn’t in that location.

I asked if that were an adjustment in his plate strategy.

“Yes and no,” he said, and then offered an admirably honest elaboration. “There’s times I go up there with that plan and kind of lose it within the at-bat. But now it’s kind of focusing on keeping it through the whole at-bat.”

And that’s the story for Harris, who showed his potential when he won NL Rookie of the Year in 2022, hitting .297 and slugging .514, which would have been top 15 in MLB had he had enough plate appearances to qualify.

In the three seasons since, nearly all of his key hitting averages have declined each year, in no small part because of his habit of swinging at pitches outside the strike zone.

“That’s been his Achilles’ heel, right?” Weiss asked. “He hits the ball really hard, but focusing in on swinging (at) strikes — and, of course, everyone wants to do it — but there’s a lot that goes into that. But the fact that he’s already walked a couple times, it’s a really good sign.”

Sunday’s spring training game against Tampa Bay at CoolToday Park produced another moment. With the score tied at 1-1 in the bottom of the fifth, Harris came to the plate with two out and the bases loaded. The Rays brought in a minor leaguer from the bullpen, Trevor Martin.

Harris laid off the first two pitches, both fastballs off the plate, to go up 2-0. Martin then channeled a fastball down the middle, which Harris lined into center to drive in two.

Harris’ pithy recounting:

“I know he wants to kind of get ahead and throw strikes, but he kind of missed the first two, so a hitter’s count. I can’t miss the fastball if he threw it, and he threw it. Had to put a good swing on it and got some runs out of it.”

It was a textbook example of situational hitting.

Unrelated, it created a nice moment when he reached first base. Rays first baseman Xavier Isaac shared a word with Harris, hiding their conversation behind his first baseman’s mitt.

“We have mutual friends, so he was telling me somebody I knew said, ‘What’s up?’” Harris said, and who can’t relate to that?

Back to plate discipline.

Perhaps this spring, Harris is indeed taking the next step toward the stardom Weiss envisions for his center fielder.

Either that or we’re in for another lesson on the fallibility of small samples.

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