Can Kyle Harrison Recapture 2024 Hype After Giants Demoted Him To Start Season?

In 2024, Kyle Harrison was one of the most highly touted pitching prospects in all of baseball.

He made the 2024 starting rotation for the San Francisco Giants as the 23rd-ranked prospect on the MiLB Top 100 Prospects list. He had an argument for the best fastball in all of the minor leagues and had a solid slider-changeup combination to complement.

But it just didn't translate.

Harrison, a third-round pick in the 2020 MLB draft, had an ERA of 4.56 and an xERA of 4.87. And when he got hit, he got hit hard.

According to Baseball Savant, he was in the 10th percentile for both hard hit and barrel rate, and in the sixth percentile for average exit velocity.

Harrison began 2025 in Triple-A after not making the Opening Day roster following the spring. He was recalled on May 5 after pitcher Lou Trivino was designated for assignment earlier that day.

Harrison has pitched three total innings for zero earned runs, three walks and five strikeouts.

While it is hard to make any solid projections based on how small the sample is, his metrics look better. While he is still getting hit hard when batters make contact, his Whiff% is up tremendously from 2024.

Part of that could be an uptick in fastball velocity by 3.4 mph from 92.5 to 95.9. But it could also be the addition of a slider to his arsenal to give batters another breaking pitch to worry about that he didn't have last year.

The addition of that fourth pitch could make him a candidate to be next in line for a starting position should someone go down, assuming he keeps up these numbers.

If he stuck to just three pitches and relied mostly on his fastball, he could be kept in the bullpen. But there are more pathways for him to become a more regular part of the game plan.

The Giants' pitching staff has been exceptional all around despite some blemishes along the way. So Harrison will have plenty of time to get himself together on a staff that can teach him well and, frankly, doesn't need him to be at his best to succeed.

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