Harris attended Yorkville High School in Illinois and was originally committed to Northwestern. He was thought of as a potential two-way player at the time of his Kentucky commitment, but he touched 96 miles per hour on the mound the summer before his senior season and quickly settled in as a pitcher once he arrived on UK's campus.
He impressed in the fall and ultimately won the midweek starting pitcher job. In his first five starts, Harris posted a 3.52 earned run average over 23 innings. Kentucky's coaching staff decided to switch up the weekend pitching staff at that point, shifting Nic McCay from the Friday night role to Saturday and Ben Cleaver from Saturday to Sunday. Ethan Walker, who had been starting on Sundays, went to the bullpen and Harris became the Friday night starter.
Harris made seven SEC starts and posted a 4.60 ERA. He pitched 31.1 conference innings and allowed 31 hits, 16 earned runs, walked 16 batters and struck out 24. Opposing batters hit .252 against him.
Something about facing teams from the state of South Carolina seemed to bring out the best in Harris. In the first game of a doubleheader against South Carolina, Harris allowed just two earned runs while posting a career-high in strikeouts (7) and innings pitched (7) as Kentucky won 7-3. In an elimination game against Clemson in the regional, Harris tied his career-high of seven strikeouts and delivered a quality start with six innings pitched and three earned runs allowed. The Wildcats routed Clemson 16-4 to stay alive, but were eliminated the following game in a 13-12 loss to West Virginia.
Projected depth chart spot entering fall
Projection: Weekend starter
Harris had the typical ups and downs of a starter that you would expect for a freshman, but he logged 59.1 innings over 13 starts. In the Nick Mingione era, only 2019 first round pick Zack Thompson threw more innings as a freshman. Harris will enter the fall with the goal of maintaining his spot as the Friday night starter.
One big question this fall
How much of a leap can Harris make from year one to year two?
One exciting thing about Harris breaking through to the weekend rotation as a freshman is that he's still fairly new to pitching. As mentioned earlier, Harris was viewed as a legitimate infield prospect as a high schooler and had not worked full-time as a pitcher until he got to Kentucky. Player trajectories can be hard to predict, but one optimistic way to view Harris' season is that he was able to post a 4.60 ERA over his first season in college baseball while still being far from refined.
With that said, a couple of his advanced numbers show a need for improvement if he's going to be the ace of a staff in the future. Among qualified pitchers in the SEC, Harris' 6.83 K/9 was 54th out of 56 pitchers. His BB/9 (walks per nine innings) of 3.94 was a little high, but not horrible for a freshman. However, take his 17% K rate and subtract his 10% walk rate, and his K%-BB% landed at 7.3%, placing him 55th out of 56 SEC pitchers. In my opinion, those numbers backed up the eye test of a young pitcher who was grinding his way through most outings against good lineups. For people who don't care as much about advanced numbers and simply want to know "did the starting pitcher give his team a chance to win?" then the answer, for the most part, was yes.
The overall vibes from year one were good with Harris. He gained a lot of meaningful experience and should enter the fall much more confident in his ability to get college hitters out. There's clear upside to be one of the best pitchers on this staff if he's able to improve his secondary offerings in year two.
Derek Terry is the founder of Bat Cats Central, a leading source for University of Kentucky baseball coverage. Before leaving full-time sportswriting, Derek worked for The Cats' Pause (2017-22) and Cats Illustrated (2015-17).
