November 14, 2014

Going Yard

Swing Dancing with Josh Harrison

by Ryan Parker

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Josh Harrison came out of nowhere, played everywhere, and established himself as a new threat in the Pittsburgh lineup in 2014. Is this a one year burst or does Josh Harrison have a shot at building off his recent success?

The short answer is a resounding yes. Harrison should be a force at the top… err, perhaps the middle of the Pirates lineup, all while patrolling the outfield… wait, the hot corner… or maybe turning a nice double play. Point is Harrison is an athletic dude. He can hit anywhere in the lineup and is a defensive Swiss army knife. His swing has always reflected this athleticism as he has good bat speed and times it well. With all these natural gifts, why did it take until 2014 for his statistical output to match his physical tools?

Well, here’s something that’s probably pretty obvious: his swing got better. The odd thing is Harrison’s improvement wasn’t a complete swing overhaul like JD Martinez or a new stride like Jose Altuve. The meat of Harrison’s swing has stayed essentially the same. A large portion of the swing, from the first launching all the way to contact, followed a similar pattern every year of his career.

The below are home runs from 2013 and 2014, focused on the launch of the bat:

2013:

2014:

Both swing patterns are pretty similar. Harrison even keeps the Andrew McCutchen-style hop out of the box. So what’s different? Here are the same homers from above, but this time with the entire swing:

2013:

2014:

The two things to focus on are the top of his bat and his back knee in both swings. In 2013, after moving the bat off his shoulders, he points it pretty much straight up and it stalls in this position for a split second. It’s tough to see, but look at the “hiccup” in his hands just before his stride foot lands. After this stall, his hands have to restart from a static position to get back into the sequence of his swing.

His back knee shows up in an inefficient way during the early phase of his swing in 2013 and prior. He sinks into his backside as the pitcher is going to release the ball, putting his back leg in a bad position to launch the swing. Ideally, the back leg sets in a diagonal line with some bend in the knee and as the swing progresses that bend increases while the hitter drives their knee forward and down. His 2013 starting position robs him of some drive in the lower half, leaving a greater burden on his upper body to drive the swing.

Another issue pops up with premature back knee bend also leads to his head simultaneously lowering. There’s a fan in a red hat behind Harrison in the 2013 image, look how his head moves in relation to the red hat as the ball is just about to be released. Some lateral head movement in a swing isn’t always a concern but any vertical drift is bad news because it makes the already difficult task of his eyes picking up the ball harder.

It’s not a coincidence that Harrison’s breakout 2014 coincided with the cleaning up of both these flaws. Looking at the end of his bat, we see that after moving it off his shoulder the bat is now slightly titled toward the pitcher. If he were to stall in this position like he had in the past, he would be in big-time trouble because the only way to get the bat launched quick enough to handle big-league heat is to not stop the hands. It’s maybe a change of three or four inches, but it allows his hands to be fluid without altering anything else in his upper body. I’m a huge fan of this fix, it’s both simple and impactful, hats off to Harrison, his coach, or whoever came up with this new pattern.

The other big change is in his back knee. Look how his back leg is pretty much a continuous line until he goes to fire his lower body, helping get full utility out of his lower half. Again, it’s a simple fix, but it cleans up so much of the inefficiency that was present in his swing prior to this season and also keeps his head in a better position. Using the shoulder of the person in the white shirt behind Harrison as a reference, we can see that his head stays at pretty much the same height until contact. This new pattern makes it significantly easier for his eyes to establish a window to pick up the ball.

The changes in Harrison’s swing don’t end there. His front leg firms up a bit sooner in 2014 and his hips work more smoothly. Watch in 2013 how his hips are changing elevation slightly over the course of his swing, in 2014, he sets his hip angle and height, then lets it rip. I can’t say whether he’s consciously firming up sooner, if it’s a result of his new lower body pattern, or even improved strength in his lower half. There are similar possible explanations for changes with his hips. They could be more stable due to conscious effort, improvement from a better lower half in general, or an offseason spent doing deadlifts and hip functionality work.

His new swing has changed how Harrison can attack pitchers. He had several aforementioned mechanical obstacles to hitting anything with good velocity before 2014. The stall in his hands, his head movement, and an inefficient lower half led to him needing a couple extra hundredths of a second to catch up to a solid fastball. His natural bat speed allowed him to be relatively productive, he wasn’t toast on fastballs, but he wasn’t crushing them like he’s proven he can.

Harrison against fastballs prior to 2014 was nothing special, and when you consider his quick bat it becomes underwhelming.

2011-13 zone profile:

Harrison against fastballs in 2014:

Ah yes, much better. With just a few simple fixes, Harrison is now crushing the offerings that used to beat him with regularity.

Harrison has made the physical adjustments necessary to be a productive big league hitter with issues like cleaning up his approach and plate disciple likely to be the next hurdles. Time previously spent cleaning up his swing can now be put towards those aspects. One thing is certain, if Harrison fails to produce, it won’t be because of his swing. He’s put in the work to make that aspect of his game easy on the eye and effective at the dish, making it easier to believe that his 2014 wasn’t a fluke, but rather the beginning of a productive career.

One last note. He can also do this:

and this:

I mean come on, how cool was that? Baseball is awesome.

Ryan Parker is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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