SAN JOSE — San Francisco Giants fans Matt Spillar and Jordan Kan waited for more than an hour in line at San Jose’s San Pedro Square for one man: Kyle Harrison. When they finally reached the front of the queue at the team’s FanFest tour stop in January, their favorite player signed a Harrison jersey, two rookie cards and a ticket from his MLB debut.
It’s easy to understand why Harrison resonates with so many Giants fans. He was born at San Jose’s Kaiser Santa Teresa, starred at Concord’s vaunted De La Salle High, grew up going to A’s and Giants games and spurned UCLA for the Giants, who drafted him in 2020.
He has the chance to write his own story as local kid turned franchise face.
“When you’re able to see them kind of work their way up through the ranks in the minors, you kind of feel like you were on that journey with them a little bit,” said Spillar, who followed some of Harrison’s journey from the San Jose Giants press box, where he works part-time.
Kan added, “That’s why those World Series years were special, because that core group of guys were homegrown players. We’re hoping for the new homegrown guys.”
The Giants and their fans know the franchise needs a wave of drafted and developed players to take lead roles to become a consistent winner again. That starts with Harrison, the top left-handed pitching prospect in baseball.
“I don’t want to put unrealistic expectations on him, but I think we all as a group have some expectations for him,” ace Logan Webb said. “I know he does…There’s a lot of people that feel that way, including MLB.com and all those things putting him as the No. 1 prospect. I give him a little crap for that. But I’m excited. He’s excited. I keep saying it, but the sky’s the limit for him.”
One of the big questions the Giants must answer heading into the 2024 season is how real – and how ready – Harrison is.
Harrison will open the season in a Giants rotation that also includes Webb, Blake Snell, Jordan Hicks and Keaton Winn. Veterans Alex Cobb and Robbie Ray are expected to come off the injured list later in the season.
Much has changed since Harrison made his debut with the Giants last season – a seven-start audition that saw him log a 4.15 ERA with 35 strikeouts in 34 ⅔ innings.
Bob Melvin replaced his first MLB manager, Gabe Kapler; his first MLB pitching coach, Andrew Bailey, left for Boston, and Brian Bannister, whom he worked closely with, took a job with the White Sox after serving as the Giants’ director of pitching.
“You know, coming up as a young guy, not knowing much, having changes – it’s out of your control,” Harrison said. “Can’t really think about it too much.”
A hamstring injury delayed his debut last year, and Harrison spent the offseason getting stronger in anticipation of a larger role in 2024.
Webb, who has taken Harrison under his wing like Kevin Gausman did him, paid for Harrison’s first month at PUSH Performance, a baseball-focused training facility in Arizona.
The results were encouraging. Harrison was able to hit 97 mph on the radar gun — three ticks faster than his average velocity — before even ramping up to maximum effort.
“The reason why he’s throwing a little more efficiently, with less effort, is changing his movement capacity and the way he’s training,” PUSH owner DJ Edwards said.
Harrison will need to do more than just throw harder. He’s been blowing fastballs past batters since high school. At the Major League level, hitters have no trouble catching up to him, especially when he doesn’t have a full arsenal of offspeed pitches to keep them off-balance.
One time last season in which Harrison didn’t have full confidence in his pitches was his third start, on Sept. 9 in San Diego. Sixty-one of his 91 pitches were fastballs, and he only threw five changeups and four cutters. Kapler left him in for the sixth inning in a display of trust for the rookie, but Harrison ran out of gas. He allowed a three-run homer in the sixth to Garrett Cooper, which was the fourth long ball he gave up in the night.
In the opposite dugout, of course, was Harrison’s new manager. Despite the rookie’s six earned runs, Melvin came away impressed.
“He knows he’s starting with us,” Melvin said on KNBR in late January. “He knows we need him to be a starter. It’s kinda his time now, so I think he’s really excited and motivated by that. The ceiling for this kid is as high as anyone in our organization and probably one of the top left-handed starting pitchers, as far as prospects go, in all of baseball.”
If Harrison can lead the way for a wave of young talent, the direction of the franchise will become clearer. At this point, that’s the Giants’ best chance at regaining prominence. Spillar and Kan and everyone else knows it.
“You look back at the teams in ‘10, ‘12, ‘14, it was built on a group of young players,” Webb said of the Giants’ three World Series winning teams from 2010-14. “They created this nucleus. I think all the guys, they want to create that. These guys are excited and ready to show what they’ve been working on. I think all of them are going to take big steps this year.”
