<img alt="Wild Card Series - Atlanta Braves v San Diego Padres - Game 2" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JLgAtz8RY4ykLWurNn9FwU9AzMs=/0x0:7597x5065/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73805618/2176275089.0.jpg">
Photo by Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images
It was an up-and-down season for the Braves center fielder, but Money Mike’s future remains exceedingly bright. After racking up 8.6 career fWAR across 252 games in his age 21 and 22 seasons, Michael Harris II entered the 2024 season as something close to an established, if relatively underrated, star with the upside of a top-10 player in the game. 2024 did its 2024 thing, unfortunately, and perhaps no player more accurately personified the Braves season than Harris.
How acquired
Harris was selected 98th overall as the Braves’ third-round pick in the 2019 draft. A pitcher/outfielder out of Stockbridge High School (less than an hour south of Atlanta), the story goes that Harris was chosen largely at the behest of then-VP of Scouting Dana Brown, who was reportedly insistent that the Braves choose Harris in the third round despite Alex Anthopoulos hoping they could wait until later in the draft. Ultimately, Anthopolous listened to Brown, and that wound up being a highly meaningful choice for both parties.
Before he had even completed his Rookie of the Year campaign in 2022, Anthopoulos locked Harris on an eight-year contract extension with club options for two additional years. Harris was guaranteed $72 million with the extension, and could earn $102 million if the options were exercised. For Brown, Harris and Spencer Strider (a fourth-round pick in the shortened 2020 draft) were the crowning achievements on an impressive resume that ultimately allowed him to ascend all the way to a General Manager appointment in Houston.
What were the expectations?
In short, the expectations for Harris heading into 2024 were pretty high. ZiPS projected Harris for 3.6 fWAR in 578 PA, which would be something like a repeat of his 3.8 fWAR 2023 campaign instead of a return to the superstar level he had shown in 2022.
However, for those inclined to peek under the hood, there was cause for optimism that he might garner results closer to his 2022 season. His rookie season actually contained within it several concerning data points that pointed towards regression – he chased too much, struggled badly against lefties, hit the ball on the ground too often, and overperformed his expected stats (.368 wOBA on a .335 xwOBA). In 2023, he still maintained his highly aggressive approach, but the Braves worked to move his focus from “outer half away” to “look for stuff in the middle.” While Harris had succeeded in 2023 by mashing non-strikes in a pretty unusual way, it turned out he was actually really good at mashing the pitches everyone else mashed, too, when focused on it — leading to him improving immensely versus lefties, hit the ball in the air with more consistency, and actually improved his xwOBA by over 20 points... only to have an xwOBA underperformance eat into it, and make it look like he was performing worse offensively in 2023 than in his rookie season.
As such, there were many in Braves country (myself included) who were more bullish on Harris than ZiPS. It wasn’t hard to see a world where he could continue to show improvement at the plate in his age-23 season, especially given how well he responded to coaching that altered his offensive approach both upon promotion in 2022 and with an offseason of work in 2023, and with his speed and defense, possibly finish the season with some MVP votes...
2024 Results
As mentioned in the opening, Michael Harris II’s 2024 season was a pretty good mirror image of the team’s 2024 season as a whole.
He started out hot, slashing .330/.363/.495 with a 137 wRC+ over his first 23 games. At that point, the 2024 Braves still looked a lot like the 2023 Braves, leading MLB with a 128 wRC+. However, there were some dark clouds on the horizon, as Harris’ great line was the result of him massively outhitting a .330 xwOBA; the team, too, was massively outhitting their xwOBA to this point.
Then, Harris suddenly went ice cold; colder than you could have thought possible for a stretch that long. He struggled to a dismal .202/.256/.276 line for a 47 wRC+ over his next 44 games. The Braves also went colder than anyone could have imagined – their 79 wRC+ was bottom three in MLB during that time frame. Once again, there were shenanigans at work. Harris definitely hit poorly, but a .299 xwOBA isn’t the same as a .236 wOBA. And the team didn’t hit well — a .309 xwOBA is basically average — but they didn’t deserve their .283 wOBA, courtesy of the biggest wOBA-xwOBA gap in baseball in that timeframe.
On June 14, Harris pulled his hamstring while running the bases and wound up missing exactly two months of the season. That, too, was extremely emblematic of the Braves – by the end of the year, more than half of their opening day lineup had missed at least two months with injuries (Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley, Ozzie Albies, Sean Murphy, and Harris).
Despite hitting a grand slam in his first plate appearance back from the injury, Harris still didn’t look like himself, hitting .218/.245/.356 for a lowly 64 wRC+ in his first 25 games back from the IL. The Braves were still scuffling alongside him, as their 91 wRC+ in that stretch was 23rd in MLB. Surprise, surprise: Harris had an above-average .324 xwOBA in that span, but massively underhit it again (.260 wOBA). The team was still underhitting its xwOBA, too, albeit not as dramatically.
That brings us to September 10. Harris clubbed 2 homers in a three-hit performance versus the Nationals in D.C, beginning what is perhaps the hottest stretch we’ve seen in his career to date. In the final 18 games of the season, Harris crushed everything in sight to the tune of a .367/.407/.696 line, good for a 199 wRC+ that ranked in the top 10 in MLB during that stretch. Now, you might think that this was some kind of karmic justice for him underhitting his xwOBA for so long and he got lucky to compensate for the poor fortune he endured earlier... but nope: he actually still underhit his .472 xwOBA in that stretch. He really was just that good.
After 4.5 months of dealing with straight-up misery, the Braves offense finally found a groove as well, catapulting themselves into the postseason by the hairs of their chinny chin chin with a 128 wRC+ and 11-7 record over the final three weeks of the season. They had the league’s third-best wOBA and xwOBA in that stretch, and finally outhit their xwOBA for a reasonable period.
Harris stayed hot in October, but sadly, the Braves couldn’t keep pace. In their two-game sweep in the Wild Card Series at San Diego, Harris went 5-8 with a double, homer, two runs, and two knocked in. The Braves, though, scratched across just four runs between the two contests. If the only thing this year’s cursed trip to the postseason accomplished was to get a monkey off of Harris’ back, it will have been worth it. In his first two postseasons in 2022 and 2023, Harris was an appalling 1-for-27 with a single and no walks (with a poor, but not that poor xwOBA). Even though it was just two games, it’s good to be able to put that narrative behind him for now.
What went right?
On the surface, it looks like 2024, on the whole, was a down year for Money Mike. He appeared in a career-low 110 games, four fewer than his rookie season (in which he didn’t debut until late May). He set career-worsts in batting average (.264), on-base percentage (.304), slugging percentage (.418), wRC+ (99), and fWAR (2.0). It’s hard to say that’s a bad season for a 23-year-old, but it was undeniably not what fans expected after Harris had put up a 125 wRC+ and 8.6 fWAR in his first two seasons combined.
Under the surface, however, you’ll find that his 2024 inputs were remarkably consistent with what we’ve seen throughout his career:
(If you are on a mobile device, this table is best viewed in landscape mode.)
Defensively, 2024 was Harris’s best season yet. Despite a career low in games played, he posted a career-best +8 OAA while posting his best rate-basis defense yet.
Also, let’s not forget his hilarious August 23 game: he started the scoring with a leadoff homer, and ended the game with... this...
One last thing (and probably the biggest one of all, in Harris’s eyes) – our guy also got married!
What went wrong?
In 2022, Harris strongly outperformed his expected stats (.335 xwOBA, .368 wOBA) on his way to earning NL Rookie of the Year honors. In 2023, he slightly underperformed his expected stats (.357 xwOBA, .345 wOBA). In 2024, the baseball gods claimed any recompense they felt they still deserved from his fortunate rookie season, and he severely underperformed his expected stats (.345 xwOBA, .312 wOBA). Across the three-year sample, his actual metrics are now pretty much in line with his expected metrics (.346 xwOBA, .341 wOBA).
The strangest part about Harris’ season was that he was a negative on the basepaths for the first time in his career. Out of the 318 players who logged at least 500 PA from 2022-2023, Harris ranked 11th in the FanGraphs BsR metric. He was not only a plus runner, he was among the very best in baseball. In 2024, he ranked 229th out of the 324 players who amassed 250-plus PAs. He was in the negatives on both sides of his injury, though definitely worse after his return. By Statcast’s new Baserunning Runs metric, he went from +5 Baserunning Runs in both 2022 and 2023 all the way down to -1 in 2024. His sprint speed dropped for a third consecutive season, but he is still in the 75th percentile. He was simply far less effective at both stolen base efficiency and extra bases taken in 2024 than we had seen before.
Perhaps this was related in part to the losses of Eric Young Sr. and Ron Washington as the Braves base coaches. It’s hard to ignore that nearly every Brave rated worse as a baserunner in 2024 compared to 2023. Braves fans will be hoping that the team shows improvement in year two of base coaches Tom Goodwin and Matt Tuiasosopo’s tenures and that this aspect of Harris’s game turns back into a weapon in 2025.
Also, Harris had an absolute nightmare of a game on September 8, which was that weird walkoff win against the Blue Jays where they forgot how to play infield defense in extra innings. Harris started the home slate with a groundout, hit into a double play in the third, had a forceout in the sixth, and another groundout in the eighth. Talk about killing worms. When he finally got the ball in the air, in the tenth, it came with the bases loaded and two out, and even though he absolutely crushed the ball, he hit it at the center fielder.
2025 Outlook
The good news – if Harris never improves and stays exactly as he’s been in his career so far, he will be a terrific baseball player. He has a career 117 wRC+ and has averaged 22 homers, 21 steals, and 4.4 fWAR per 150 games. Assuming good health, I think this would be a perfectly reasonable projection for him moving forward.
The even better news – and what gives me hope for a monster 2025 – is that Harris mostly maintained those improvements that we saw from the 2022-2023 season. He continued to keep the ball in the air much more than we saw in his rookie year (56.2 percent grounders in 2022, 47.2 percent in 2023, 49.4 percent in 2024). He actually had reverse splits (115 wRC+ vs. LHP, 91 wRC+ vs. RHP, though some of that is xwOBA shenanigans-driven) and now has a mild and very normal handedness split for his career (122 wRC+ vs. RHP, 104 vs. LHP). And while he was roughly a league-average hitter by wRC+ and wOBA, his xwOBA was in the 81st percentile for MLB hitters.
ZiPS 2025 projections for the Braves are already out, and even though he’s coming off a down year, they’ve become much more bullish on Harris than they were in 2023. ZiPS projects him as the second-best player on the Braves (behind Acuña), giving him a .294/.338/.480 line with 20 homers, 15 steals, and 4.7 WAR in just 560 PA. Steamer is also buying in, projecting him for a 124 wRC+, 26 homers, 21 steals and a team-best 5.2 WAR in 645 PA. That 5.2 WAR projection is tied with Cal Raleigh, Francisco Lindor, and old pal William Contreras for the 11th-best position player projection in MLB.
As a reminder, the 4.7 WAR projection from ZiPS is the 50th percentile outcome – basically the average season that ZiPS would expect from him. ZiPS also releases their 80th percentile and 20th percentile outcomes, which demonstrates some of the range of possibilities should he perform above expectations or below expectations. Their 20th percentile outcome for Harris (or, not too far off from what they see as his floor) is a 101 OPS+ and 3.0 WAR – basically what he was in 2024. I tend to agree that 2024 is a good representation of his reasonable floor. His 80th percentile outcome for 2025 is a monster 144 OPS+ and 6.2 WAR, which would likely see him garnering some top 5 MVP votes. Again, I tend to agree that a 6 WAR season is around the peak of what we could reasonably project.
If you want to dream about outcomes beyond the 80th percentile (just for fun), it’s not impossible to see him getting to a true MVP level (7+ WAR) as soon as 2025. I’d expect that he’ll begin the year as the Braves leadoff hitter until Acuña returns, and if he’s hitting well at that point, they might bat him second. If that’s the case and he stays healthy enough to play 160 games or so and the Braves offense returns to form, you’d likely see Harris log 700+ PAs. If he does that at the pace of his 80th percentile offensive outcome (140ish wRC+, 30+ homers, 25+ steals) and his defense remains excellent or improves just a little, then you’re effectively looking at Francisco Lindor’s 2023, in which he finished runner-up to Shohei Ohtani for the NL MVP. There are a lot of “ifs” there, but the truth is, there are only a handful of players that you can close your eyes and even imagine a somewhat-realistic scenario where they become good enough to be runner up to Ohtani for MVP. Michael Harris II is one of those special few.
Anyways, enough dreaming. The Braves don’t need Michael Harris II to be the MVP – they just need him to stay healthy. I believe I speak on behalf of all of Braves country when I say that we will happily accept the 50th percentile, 5.2 WAR outcome that Steamer has so kindly offered, thank you very much.
<img alt="Wild Card Series - Atlanta Braves v San Diego Padres - Game 2" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JLgAtz8RY4ykLWurNn9FwU9AzMs=/0x0:7597x5065/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73805618/2176275089.0.jpg">
Photo by Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images
It was an up-and-down season for the Braves center fielder, but Money Mike’s future remains exceedingly bright. After racking up 8.6 career fWAR across 252 games in his age 21 and 22 seasons, Michael Harris II entered the 2024 season as something close to an established, if relatively underrated, star with the upside of a top-10 player in the game. 2024 did its 2024 thing, unfortunately, and perhaps no player more accurately personified the Braves season than Harris.
How acquired
Harris was selected 98th overall as the Braves’ third-round pick in the 2019 draft. A pitcher/outfielder out of Stockbridge High School (less than an hour south of Atlanta), the story goes that Harris was chosen largely at the behest of then-VP of Scouting Dana Brown, who was reportedly insistent that the Braves choose Harris in the third round despite Alex Anthopoulos hoping they could wait until later in the draft. Ultimately, Anthopolous listened to Brown, and that wound up being a highly meaningful choice for both parties.
Before he had even completed his Rookie of the Year campaign in 2022, Anthopoulos locked Harris on an eight-year contract extension with club options for two additional years. Harris was guaranteed $72 million with the extension, and could earn $102 million if the options were exercised. For Brown, Harris and Spencer Strider (a fourth-round pick in the shortened 2020 draft) were the crowning achievements on an impressive resume that ultimately allowed him to ascend all the way to a General Manager appointment in Houston.
What were the expectations?
In short, the expectations for Harris heading into 2024 were pretty high. ZiPS projected Harris for 3.6 fWAR in 578 PA, which would be something like a repeat of his 3.8 fWAR 2023 campaign instead of a return to the superstar level he had shown in 2022.
However, for those inclined to peek under the hood, there was cause for optimism that he might garner results closer to his 2022 season. His rookie season actually contained within it several concerning data points that pointed towards regression – he chased too much, struggled badly against lefties, hit the ball on the ground too often, and overperformed his expected stats (.368 wOBA on a .335 xwOBA). In 2023, he still maintained his highly aggressive approach, but the Braves worked to move his focus from “outer half away” to “look for stuff in the middle.” While Harris had succeeded in 2023 by mashing non-strikes in a pretty unusual way, it turned out he was actually really good at mashing the pitches everyone else mashed, too, when focused on it — leading to him improving immensely versus lefties, hit the ball in the air with more consistency, and actually improved his xwOBA by over 20 points... only to have an xwOBA underperformance eat into it, and make it look like he was performing worse offensively in 2023 than in his rookie season.
As such, there were many in Braves country (myself included) who were more bullish on Harris than ZiPS. It wasn’t hard to see a world where he could continue to show improvement at the plate in his age-23 season, especially given how well he responded to coaching that altered his offensive approach both upon promotion in 2022 and with an offseason of work in 2023, and with his speed and defense, possibly finish the season with some MVP votes...
2024 Results
As mentioned in the opening, Michael Harris II’s 2024 season was a pretty good mirror image of the team’s 2024 season as a whole.
He started out hot, slashing .330/.363/.495 with a 137 wRC+ over his first 23 games. At that point, the 2024 Braves still looked a lot like the 2023 Braves, leading MLB with a 128 wRC+. However, there were some dark clouds on the horizon, as Harris’ great line was the result of him massively outhitting a .330 xwOBA; the team, too, was massively outhitting their xwOBA to this point.
Then, Harris suddenly went ice cold; colder than you could have thought possible for a stretch that long. He struggled to a dismal .202/.256/.276 line for a 47 wRC+ over his next 44 games. The Braves also went colder than anyone could have imagined – their 79 wRC+ was bottom three in MLB during that time frame. Once again, there were shenanigans at work. Harris definitely hit poorly, but a .299 xwOBA isn’t the same as a .236 wOBA. And the team didn’t hit well — a .309 xwOBA is basically average — but they didn’t deserve their .283 wOBA, courtesy of the biggest wOBA-xwOBA gap in baseball in that timeframe.
On June 14, Harris pulled his hamstring while running the bases and wound up missing exactly two months of the season. That, too, was extremely emblematic of the Braves – by the end of the year, more than half of their opening day lineup had missed at least two months with injuries (Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley, Ozzie Albies, Sean Murphy, and Harris).
Despite hitting a grand slam in his first plate appearance back from the injury, Harris still didn’t look like himself, hitting .218/.245/.356 for a lowly 64 wRC+ in his first 25 games back from the IL. The Braves were still scuffling alongside him, as their 91 wRC+ in that stretch was 23rd in MLB. Surprise, surprise: Harris had an above-average .324 xwOBA in that span, but massively underhit it again (.260 wOBA). The team was still underhitting its xwOBA, too, albeit not as dramatically.
That brings us to September 10. Harris clubbed 2 homers in a three-hit performance versus the Nationals in D.C, beginning what is perhaps the hottest stretch we’ve seen in his career to date. In the final 18 games of the season, Harris crushed everything in sight to the tune of a .367/.407/.696 line, good for a 199 wRC+ that ranked in the top 10 in MLB during that stretch. Now, you might think that this was some kind of karmic justice for him underhitting his xwOBA for so long and he got lucky to compensate for the poor fortune he endured earlier... but nope: he actually still underhit his .472 xwOBA in that stretch. He really was just that good.
After 4.5 months of dealing with straight-up misery, the Braves offense finally found a groove as well, catapulting themselves into the postseason by the hairs of their chinny chin chin with a 128 wRC+ and 11-7 record over the final three weeks of the season. They had the league’s third-best wOBA and xwOBA in that stretch, and finally outhit their xwOBA for a reasonable period.
Harris stayed hot in October, but sadly, the Braves couldn’t keep pace. In their two-game sweep in the Wild Card Series at San Diego, Harris went 5-8 with a double, homer, two runs, and two knocked in. The Braves, though, scratched across just four runs between the two contests. If the only thing this year’s cursed trip to the postseason accomplished was to get a monkey off of Harris’ back, it will have been worth it. In his first two postseasons in 2022 and 2023, Harris was an appalling 1-for-27 with a single and no walks (with a poor, but not that poor xwOBA). Even though it was just two games, it’s good to be able to put that narrative behind him for now.
What went right?
On the surface, it looks like 2024, on the whole, was a down year for Money Mike. He appeared in a career-low 110 games, four fewer than his rookie season (in which he didn’t debut until late May). He set career-worsts in batting average (.264), on-base percentage (.304), slugging percentage (.418), wRC+ (99), and fWAR (2.0). It’s hard to say that’s a bad season for a 23-year-old, but it was undeniably not what fans expected after Harris had put up a 125 wRC+ and 8.6 fWAR in his first two seasons combined.
Under the surface, however, you’ll find that his 2024 inputs were remarkably consistent with what we’ve seen throughout his career:
(If you are on a mobile device, this table is best viewed in landscape mode.)
Defensively, 2024 was Harris’s best season yet. Despite a career low in games played, he posted a career-best +8 OAA while posting his best rate-basis defense yet.
Also, let’s not forget his hilarious August 23 game: he started the scoring with a leadoff homer, and ended the game with... this...
One last thing (and probably the biggest one of all, in Harris’s eyes) – our guy also got married!
What went wrong?
In 2022, Harris strongly outperformed his expected stats (.335 xwOBA, .368 wOBA) on his way to earning NL Rookie of the Year honors. In 2023, he slightly underperformed his expected stats (.357 xwOBA, .345 wOBA). In 2024, the baseball gods claimed any recompense they felt they still deserved from his fortunate rookie season, and he severely underperformed his expected stats (.345 xwOBA, .312 wOBA). Across the three-year sample, his actual metrics are now pretty much in line with his expected metrics (.346 xwOBA, .341 wOBA).
The strangest part about Harris’ season was that he was a negative on the basepaths for the first time in his career. Out of the 318 players who logged at least 500 PA from 2022-2023, Harris ranked 11th in the FanGraphs BsR metric. He was not only a plus runner, he was among the very best in baseball. In 2024, he ranked 229th out of the 324 players who amassed 250-plus PAs. He was in the negatives on both sides of his injury, though definitely worse after his return. By Statcast’s new Baserunning Runs metric, he went from +5 Baserunning Runs in both 2022 and 2023 all the way down to -1 in 2024. His sprint speed dropped for a third consecutive season, but he is still in the 75th percentile. He was simply far less effective at both stolen base efficiency and extra bases taken in 2024 than we had seen before.
Perhaps this was related in part to the losses of Eric Young Sr. and Ron Washington as the Braves base coaches. It’s hard to ignore that nearly every Brave rated worse as a baserunner in 2024 compared to 2023. Braves fans will be hoping that the team shows improvement in year two of base coaches Tom Goodwin and Matt Tuiasosopo’s tenures and that this aspect of Harris’s game turns back into a weapon in 2025.
Also, Harris had an absolute nightmare of a game on September 8, which was that weird walkoff win against the Blue Jays where they forgot how to play infield defense in extra innings. Harris started the home slate with a groundout, hit into a double play in the third, had a forceout in the sixth, and another groundout in the eighth. Talk about killing worms. When he finally got the ball in the air, in the tenth, it came with the bases loaded and two out, and even though he absolutely crushed the ball, he hit it at the center fielder.
2025 Outlook
The good news – if Harris never improves and stays exactly as he’s been in his career so far, he will be a terrific baseball player. He has a career 117 wRC+ and has averaged 22 homers, 21 steals, and 4.4 fWAR per 150 games. Assuming good health, I think this would be a perfectly reasonable projection for him moving forward.
The even better news – and what gives me hope for a monster 2025 – is that Harris mostly maintained those improvements that we saw from the 2022-2023 season. He continued to keep the ball in the air much more than we saw in his rookie year (56.2 percent grounders in 2022, 47.2 percent in 2023, 49.4 percent in 2024). He actually had reverse splits (115 wRC+ vs. LHP, 91 wRC+ vs. RHP, though some of that is xwOBA shenanigans-driven) and now has a mild and very normal handedness split for his career (122 wRC+ vs. RHP, 104 vs. LHP). And while he was roughly a league-average hitter by wRC+ and wOBA, his xwOBA was in the 81st percentile for MLB hitters.
ZiPS 2025 projections for the Braves are already out, and even though he’s coming off a down year, they’ve become much more bullish on Harris than they were in 2023. ZiPS projects him as the second-best player on the Braves (behind Acuña), giving him a .294/.338/.480 line with 20 homers, 15 steals, and 4.7 WAR in just 560 PA. Steamer is also buying in, projecting him for a 124 wRC+, 26 homers, 21 steals and a team-best 5.2 WAR in 645 PA. That 5.2 WAR projection is tied with Cal Raleigh, Francisco Lindor, and old pal William Contreras for the 11th-best position player projection in MLB.
As a reminder, the 4.7 WAR projection from ZiPS is the 50th percentile outcome – basically the average season that ZiPS would expect from him. ZiPS also releases their 80th percentile and 20th percentile outcomes, which demonstrates some of the range of possibilities should he perform above expectations or below expectations. Their 20th percentile outcome for Harris (or, not too far off from what they see as his floor) is a 101 OPS+ and 3.0 WAR – basically what he was in 2024. I tend to agree that 2024 is a good representation of his reasonable floor. His 80th percentile outcome for 2025 is a monster 144 OPS+ and 6.2 WAR, which would likely see him garnering some top 5 MVP votes. Again, I tend to agree that a 6 WAR season is around the peak of what we could reasonably project.
If you want to dream about outcomes beyond the 80th percentile (just for fun), it’s not impossible to see him getting to a true MVP level (7+ WAR) as soon as 2025. I’d expect that he’ll begin the year as the Braves leadoff hitter until Acuña returns, and if he’s hitting well at that point, they might bat him second. If that’s the case and he stays healthy enough to play 160 games or so and the Braves offense returns to form, you’d likely see Harris log 700+ PAs. If he does that at the pace of his 80th percentile offensive outcome (140ish wRC+, 30+ homers, 25+ steals) and his defense remains excellent or improves just a little, then you’re effectively looking at Francisco Lindor’s 2023, in which he finished runner-up to Shohei Ohtani for the NL MVP. There are a lot of “ifs” there, but the truth is, there are only a handful of players that you can close your eyes and even imagine a somewhat-realistic scenario where they become good enough to be runner up to Ohtani for MVP. Michael Harris II is one of those special few.
Anyways, enough dreaming. The Braves don’t need Michael Harris II to be the MVP – they just need him to stay healthy. I believe I speak on behalf of all of Braves country when I say that we will happily accept the 50th percentile, 5.2 WAR outcome that Steamer has so kindly offered, thank you very much.
Link to original article
