He came up a triple short of the cycle. From his first at-bat in the leadoff spot, he set the tone for the Braves. And he made another ridiculous catch in center field.
Michael Harris II has maybe never been hotter in his career and the streak has come at absolutely the right time for the Braves. In the opener of a pressure-filled series at Truist Park, Harris came through Tuesday night, helping deliver a 5-1 win over the New York Mets in the first of a three-game series that will go a long way to determining whether the Braves see the postseason.
“It’s kind of like an out-of-body experience,” Harris said at his locker after the game of his surge. “I feel like I black out sometimes and it’s fun. I’m glad I’m in that zone right now and trying to keep it going.”
Tuesday night, the Stockbridge High graduate contributed arguably the biggest hit of the game, a pulled double to right in the third inning that scored Orlando Arcia from second base and set the stage for the Braves to score the first three runs of the game.
Harris’ explanation of the at-bat gave a peek into how things are going for him. Harris said that a) he doesn’t normally swing at the first pitch; b) he was just trying to move Arcia over to third base. But Harris far surpassed his objective, attacking Mets starter Luis Severino’s first pitch, an up-and-in cutter, and driving it to right.
“Just little things, and knowing the situation and how to do it,” Harris said.
In the fourth, Harris followed with a solo opposite-field home run (his 16th of the year) for a 4-0 lead. He then made the defensive play of the game in the top of the fifth, rushing in and diving to snag a low line drive off the bat of Mets rookie Luisangel Acuña (the younger brother of Ronald Acuña Jr.). Harris caught the ball inches off the turf, a putout that earned the highest of praise from manager Brian Snitker.
“Reminded me of Andruw in center field with the play he made,” said Snitker, referring to Braves great Andruw Jones, the 10-time Gold Glove center fielder and arguably the best defensive center fielder in the history of the game.
After he made the catch, Harris sat with legs spread on the turf, a vision in mint-green cleats and a matching sleeve. He shook his head in disbelief.
“I just feel like I’m in the zone right now,” he said. “Just getting to that ball, I didn’t think I could get to it originally and I guess just making a play to keep them off base and help out Spencer (Schwellenbach) and I guess win this game, which is all I’m trying to do.”
In a series where one play can keep the season alive or all but close the door, the Braves have a most useful lever to pull in Harris, who can tilt games with his bat and his glove and has been doing both frequently lately. And again Tuesday.
“He’s the best center fielder in baseball,” said the rookie pitcher Schwellenbach, Tuesday night’s winner. “The way the guy goes and catches balls is unbelievable. He’s getting hot at the right time. We need that and he’s just been playing incredible baseball for us.”
Over the past 13 games, Harris is hitting .417 with seven home runs. He has an OPS of 1.288. It’s his highest OPS and his highest home-run total over a 13-game single-season span in his career. Harris pointed back to the second game of that 13-game stretch, when he doubled to break up a no-hit bid by the Nationals’ Jake Irvin in the sixth inning of a 5-1 loss on Sept. 11 in Washington.
“I guess I just figured something out and kept it going and have been getting results since, so just trying to keep that going and help us win,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The hot streak is all the more remarkable given how he had been playing before this stretch. In the first 25 games since he came back from a hamstring injury suffered in June, Harris was hitting .218 with an OPS of .602. The surge is not unlike what Braves fans saw from him last year, when he started off slowly from an early-season back injury but tore up opposing pitching over the final four months of the 2023 season, when he hit .335 with an OPS of .912 over his final 100 games of the regular season.
Even his quietest base hit of the night told the story of his recent excellence at the plate. In the first inning against Severino, Harris fell behind 0-2 but then fouled off five pitches before hitting a line-drive single to center.
It set the tone for the Braves lineup, who fouled off a slew of offerings from Severino, took him to the opposite field, moved runners over and squeezed 89 pitches out of him in just four innings to get into the Mets bullpen.
“I think it helped the rest of the lineup, too, seeing where he’s trying to throw the ball and what he does in certain counts,” Harris said. “Later, as the game went on, I got more confident against him and knew if he threw it in the strike zone, I was going to try to get a bat on it.”
The Braves now stand a game behind the Mets in the wild-card race (and a half-game behind the Diamondbacks, who now hold the third and last wild-card spot) and can gain a tie with the Mets with a win Wednesday.
“We’ve just got to come out and do the same thing the next two days to control our own destiny,” Harris said.
With these Braves, it’s hard to trust how long any streak, hot or cold, will last. The Braves will ride Harris for as long as he can go.
“Good timing, I can tell you that.” Snitker said. “It’s the right time of year to get hot.”
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