Commentary: Tutored by Red Sox, pitcher Harrison showcases skills with Brewers

Kyle Harrison got the news as he took his annual spring training physical for the Boston Red Sox in Fort Myers, Florida. Someone told him to see the manager, Alex Cora, and Harrison had a feeling he was gone. He had been through it before.

Now Cora is also gone, the headliner in last weekend’s purge of dugout leadership by Craig Breslow, Boston’s chief baseball officer. Back in February, Cora told Harrison that he had been traded to the Milwaukee Brewers. To Harrison -- and his suddenly former teammates -- this was encouraging.

“I remember thinking, ‘Man, I’ve heard of a lot of guys getting here and learning and getting better, trusting their stuff,’” Harrison said this week, by phone from Milwaukee. “Even teammates with me in the Red Sox organization were saying, like, ‘Oh, you’ll be great over there -- they’re going to do it again,’ stuff like that, just knowing that they’ve got a great thing going on here.”

Those Red Sox players had seen Milwaukee pull the same trick the year before, with Quinn Priester. Like Harrison, Priester was a former top prospect who had gone to the Red Sox in a trade the previous season, only to languish in the minors before a brief September cameo.

Priester -- now recovering from thoracic outlet syndrome -- got one start for Boston, then went to Milwaukee for a breakout 2025 season: 13-3 with a 3.34 ERA. Harrison got two starts for Boston, and now he is thriving for the Brewers, too.

On Sunday in Milwaukee, Harrison blanked Pittsburgh for six innings, striking out 12 while allowing one hit and one walk. Only three other Brewers had ever made a scoreless start with that many strikeouts and so few walks and hits, and the strikeout total matched Toronto’s Dylan Cease for the most in the majors this season.

“That’s what you’ve got to feel like you’re capable of on any day as a pitcher,” Harrison said. “Once you get that good first inning -- I struck out the side, and I didn’t really think anything of it -- it’s just this monotonous way of like: Just keep going. You don’t really feel it, honestly.”

The season is young, of course, and that was Harrison’s first start to last six innings. But his ERA ahead of a Saturday start against Washington is 2.28, his walks and hits are down, his strikeouts are up, and he seems to be the latest example of a modern truism: If a pitcher wants to find the best version of himself, go to Milwaukee.

“I don’t have a sexy answer for you,” said the Brewers’ pitching coach, Chris Hook. “I really don’t. I mean, I wish I could say, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s this or that.’ It’s just good, old-fashioned hard work. It’s trying to get better every day and not relenting on that.”

Harrison, 24, signed with the San Francisco Giants in 2020 as a third-round draft choice from De La Salle High School in Concord, California. He entered 2023 as the No. 12 prospect in the sport, according to The Athletic’s Keith Law, and reached the majors that summer.

But in 31 starts over two seasons, Harrison was 8-8 with a 4.47 ERA, hounded by shoulder inflammation that cost him velocity on a fastball he likes to use up in the zone. On June 15, before a Sunday night start in San Francisco, the Giants pulled him from the bullpen mound. He had been traded to the Red Sox as part of a four-player package for Rafael Devers.

The deal blindsided the industry, and Harrison could have easily been upset. Instead of starting against the Los Angeles Dodgers by McCovey Cove, his next assignment would be in Moosic, Pennsylvania, for Triple-A Worcester. The Red Sox wanted him to learn some new pitches, and Harrison was open to it.

“Basically when I got over there, it was like: ‘We want to make the change-up better,’” he said. “And there was this young lefty, Connelly Early, he was in Double-A at the time, and they’re like, ‘Hey, this guy has a pretty good kick change; we think you could do something similar.’

“And then I started just messing with that grip, and it took forever to harness, man. It took all the way up through this offseason, trying to get a feel for it.”

The new grip was hazardous, Harrison explained; over the winter, he would coat his left thumb in glue to keep another finger from slicing it when he threw the change-up. But he loved the depth he was getting on it, and by this spring, it felt comfortable.

By then, of course, Harrison was pitching for the Brewers. He must have felt like a game-show contestant who doesn’t win but leaves with a nice parting gift.

“It was kind of cool to have that time with the Red Sox, because I was able to experiment, see what works, try certain pitches I never would have tried,” he said. “And then I got this change-up out of it, so we’ll take it, you know?”

The Red Sox got infielders Caleb Durbin, Andruw Monasterio and Anthony Seigler for Harrison, infielder David Hamilton and pitcher Shane Drohan. Harrison got that change-up, a third pitch in an arsenal that relies on a slurve and a pitch that Hook calls a “magical fastball.”

“He is coming from a lower slot, and from that low angle, it gets really flat,” Hook said, adding that Harrison had also moved from the third base to first base side of the rubber. “And then as we’re seeing more improved daily work, with that combination of low entry angle and the ability to get to the top of the zone -- where he knows he performs well -- you’re seeing good results.”

So far, the Red Sox have seen poor results from their end of the deal. Entering Friday’s games, Durbin was hitting .172 with one homer, accentuating the loss of his slugging predecessors at third base, Devers and Alex Bregman. And Boston’s rotation had a 4.85 ERA, with Garrett Crochet and Sonny Gray on the injured list.

They could have used Harrison, but as it turned out, he was only passing through.

“I was sitting here just the other day, thinking, ‘Man, most of my time with the Giants I was banged up, just trying to survive out there, battling,’” Harrison said. “So for the Brewers to be able to see that this is who I could be, and hopefully maintain that, it’s just cool to see.”

A Number So Nice, They Retired It Twice

If the Seattle Mariners had chosen to retire Randy Johnson’s uniform number Friday, they would have been saluting No. 51 on 5/1. Maybe it’s better, though, that the ceremony will take place Saturday. After all, this is the retirement of No. 51 -- take 2.

In August, the Mariners retired No. 51 for Ichiro Suzuki, who wore the number when he joined the team in 2001. Before he signed, he wrote to Johnson asking for his blessing, knowing that the number was out of circulation. Johnson had worn it as the team’s ace from 1989 to 1998.

“I had no problem: ‘Wear it and enjoy it,’” Johnson said last year. “And then he went on to have a Hall of Fame career. But there really was never any significance to me wearing the number 51.”

The Mariners will become the fifth team to have a number retired for two players, joining:

-- Athletics: No. 34, Rollie Fingers and Dave Stewart

-- Chicago Cubs: No. 31, Ferguson Jenkins and Greg Maddux

-- Montreal Expos: No. 10, Andre Dawson and Rusty Staub

-- New York Yankees: No. 8, Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra

The Washington Nationals have issued No. 10 several times since moving from Montreal in 2005; their only currently retired number is 11, for Ryan Zimmerman. Jackie Robinson’s number 42 is retired throughout MLB, but the St. Louis Cardinals also retired it for Bruce Sutter and the New York Yankees for Mariano Rivera.

It stands to reason that the Los Angeles Angels will eventually retire No. 27 twice. Vladimir Guerrero wore it from 2004 to 2009 and became the only player with an Angels cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. The team reissued 27 as soon as Guerrero left: first to a veteran outfielder named Mike Ryan and then to a kid named Mike Trout.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company

This story was originally published May 2, 2026 at 11:17 AM.