Pirates' Josh Harrison Has Risen from Complete Unknown to MVP Candidate

Utility men are not supposed to garner MVP consideration, no matter how super. 

Josh Harrison, however, is changing that thinking. And it is not in spite of him being the best utility man in baseball. It is because of it.

Harrison’s rise as one of the National League’s best players is about as unexpected a story as there is in the game this year, and his ascent is helping push the Pittsburgh Pirates back into the postseason while garnering the 27-year-old do-everything MVP attention.

There is no chance of Harrison winning the award, of course, but a top-10 finish in the voting would cap off quite a year. He was never considered a top prospect and had a .250 career average entering the season.

“When you look at the MVP and assess the definition what it means, he’s definitely been the most valuable player for us this year,” reigning NL MVP and Pirates teammate Andrew McCutchen told Bob Nightengale of USA Today. “You look past the numbers, you don't have to hit the most home runs or have the most RBI to consider yourself an MVP.” 

Harrison is second in the league with a .318 average—he was first until Wednesday night, when Colorado’s Justin Morneau went 3-for-4 to raise his average to .320—and his .506 slugging percentage is fifth, his .857 OPS is sixth and his 141 wRC+ is eighth. He has also played five positions for the Pirates, playing all of them well but none of them for more than 60 games through Wednesday. 

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Josh Harrison's run at the NL MVP award is quite amazing to watch. He's hitting .341/.372/.575 with a 167 wRC+ in the second half.

— Devan F. (@CoverThoseBases) September 15, 2014"

If Harrison wins the batting title, he would earn the distinction of having the lowest career average (.250) for any NL batting champ heading into their winning season.

“If we don't have J-Hay here, how would we be doing? You take him away from this team, and that would answer your question,” McCutchen told Nightengale. “He really is the most valuable player for me.”

It looked nothing like in April. Harrison started only two games in the first month—that includes one game in March—and was 5-for-23 (.217) entering May.

Since then, beginning with a start in right field on May 3, Harrison is hitting .324 in 476 plate appearances with an All-Star selection sandwiched in between.

Those numbers, the versatility and the overall story of a non-descript utility man-turned-All-Star have caused Harrison’s popularity to soar in Pittsburgh. He has his own hashtag—#JHayAllDay—that explodes in the city whenever he does something memorable, such as escaping seemingly impossible-to-escape rundowns. 

Fans love Harrison for obvious reasons, even if they didn’t really know who he was or what he could potentially bring to the big leagues when the Pirates acquired him from the Cubs in a 2009 deadline trade.

At the time, Harrison was proving he could hit Class A-level pitching, but he was also 22 when he was traded, old for a player at that level. But as he advanced through Pittsburgh’s system, his hitting prowess did as well. By the time the Pirates called him up the first time in 2011, he was establishing himself as one of the better hitters for average in the minors. 

Now that Harrison is a regular in the Pirates lineup—another part of his value and versatility is he can hit anywhere in the order, and he has this season, literally hitting in every spot from 1-9—his season is not looking so fluky that he shouldn’t sustain his performance into 2015. He is duplicating the lines he had in the minors, and having a consistent spot in the lineup every day has clearly helped his major league production.

Harrison’s BABIP is .352, way up from his three-season major league average of .275. Usually this kind of jump means a regression to the mean is on the horizon, but Harrison’s expected BABIP, or xBABIP, comes out to .349, according to Dayn Perry of CBSSports.com. 

There are reasons for this beyond luck, as there have been telling changes in other areas of Harrison’s game. He is popping out to the infield less, hitting more line drives and is hitting the ball farther on average.

He is also making far less contact when he swings at pitches out of the strike zone. Maybe that sounds like a negative attribute, but consider that making contact with pitches out of the zone often leads to weak batted balls and outs. Take away those average-dropping balls in play, and you can see how it can help Harrison’s overall production. 

It is entirely possible we are seeing a player’s evolution and development into a premium hitter, and along with that comes stardom and all of its benefits. That includes a nice salary raise and possibly an extension to give the Pirates cost control through his arbitration years while giving Harrison, 27, financial security.

Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

Regardless of how the Pirates handle Harrison’s contract situation, they have themselves a fan-favorite star that gives manager Clint Hurdle a world of flexibility when writing out his offensive and defensive lineups.

He is also giving the team plenty of reasons to call him their MVP.

“I always knew that given the opportunity to play everyday, these are the things that I'm capable of,” Harrison told USA Today. “I just wanted to show what I can do.”

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.