Pittsburgh Pirates: Revisiting Josh Harrison’s 2014 Season

Josh Harrison broke out in 2014, but the amount of value he brought tot the Pittsburgh Pirates is sometimes understated.

The 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates were an extremely magical and fun team to watch. Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte, A.J. Burnett, and Francisco Liriano led a Bucco crew that made it to the playoffs for the first time in 20 years.

The Pittsburgh Pirates got production from everywhere on their team. They had a strong defense, offense and pitching, both starters and relievers. In 2014, they made the playoffs again, in no short order because of the breakout of Josh Harrison. Harrison clearly played a big role with his breakout, but the amount of value he contributed is just simply overlooked.

Harrison had entered the year as a soft hitting, speedy utility man. From 2011 to 2013, Harrison had only cobbled together a .250/.282/.367 line, .283 wOBA and 78 wRC+. Power was essentially non-existent for Harrison as he had a .117 isolated slugging percentage. He did, however, serve as a solid pinch runner with +2.1 base running runs above average. Harrison saw at least one inning at every position except first base, catcher, pitcher, and center field, and his defense was solid anywhere the Pittsburgh Pirates put him.

Harrison entered 2014 with a similar role as the occasional pinch hitter, and swiss army bench bat. But Harrison wasn’t going to settle for just a bench role. Through the first two months of the season, he was hitting .294/.330/.486 with a 131 wRC+. The Pirates had to find somewhere to play him at a near every day basis with that kind of production, and luckily they did. Harrison played third base, second base, shortstop, and both outfield corners in 2014.

By August, Harrison was still crushing the baseball with a .297/.334/.482 line and 130 wRC+. Because Pedro Alvarez was struggling in 2014, both from a lack of performance with the bat and especially with the glove, so much so the Pirates started giving him some reps at first base. Alvarez also missed a good chunk of the season because of injury. With all of this, Harrison found a defensive home for the most part, and was the team’s primary hot corner defender from mid-August onward.

Harrison was an outstanding third baseman with +11 DRS, +3.6 UZR and 1.0 range runs above average. He was just one of seven third basemen with double digits in DRS, and he only was at third base for 518.2 innings. Had he only received 800 innings, which is still a fair amount less than most others at his position, he would have led the league in DRS at +17.

Just because he played third base the most often in 2014 doesn’t mean he was ineffective with the glove at the other positions he played. At second, he had +2 DRS, 5.2 UZR/150 and 0.1 range runs above average in 105 innings. Harrison also saw 362.1 innings in both corner outfield spots. He wasn’t as effective of a defender in the grass compared to his infield work, but still had solid numbers including +3 DRS, +1.5 outfield arm runs above average, but -3.4 range runs above average and -1.7 UZR.

Overall in 2014, Harrison had hit .315/.347/.490 with a 133 OPS+, 137 wRC+, and 4.8 fWAR across 550 plate appearances. Despite walking a measly 4% of the time, he carried a strong 14.7% strikeout rate. Harrison also had +3.7 base running runs above average, and reached double digits in long balls (13) and stolen bases (18). His fWAR made him and Ben Zobrist the only two players in baseball to have an fWAR above 4, and have at least 100 innings logged at four or more positions.

But one thing Harrison did well was come through in the clutch. With men in scoring position, Harrison batted .372/.404/.500 with a 155 wRC+. His .372 batting average with runners in scoring positiob led all Pirates, and his 155 wRC+ was second to just catcher Russell Martin. He was even better when it came to high leverage situations. In the 48 plate appearances he had when the situation was considered a high leverage moment, Harrison batted .442/.468/.628 with a 207 wRC+. Harrison was better when it came time to clutch up in 2014 than Joey Votto and David Ortiz. This is shown in his +1.22 clutch index, and 16th in baseball.

Many know that Harrison was valuable to the 2014 Pittsburgh Pirates because he was a good hitter this year, and played multiple positions. But while that makes him an extremely valuable player, I think what’s more valuable than his ability to play multiple positions to an average or better level is his ability to come through in the clutch. Should the Pirates have batted him lower than the leadoff spot where he received 376 of his 550 plate appearances so he could get more chances to drive in runners? Maybe, but he hit extremely well out of the #1 hole, and was arguably the Pirates’ most valuable player this year.