There were exciting, talented rookies all over the diamond. The dynamic Elly De La Cruz, the precocious Patrick Bailey, the defensive wizard Casey Schmitt, the 8-3 Andrew Abbott.
But like his high-90s fastball, Kyle Harrison levitated over them all.
With a spectacular performance, Harrison became the first Giant in 111 years to record double-digit strikeouts in his second career start. In the past five years, only Harrison and Shohei Ohtani have fanned 11 in their second career start.
Harrison got nearly as many standing ovations from an inspired Oracle Park crowd as he did strikeouts. Suddenly, the Giants have another starter in their rotation for the September stretch run. Their ace of the future may have just arrived ahead of schedule — and just in time.
To lead the Giants (68-63) to a rip-roaring, 4-1 win, Harrison shut down the Reds for 6.1 innings, turning an important win in the National League wild card race into a special night at Oracle Park.
“Obviously, adrenaline is a little different here,” Harrison said postgame. “I think I just fed off that. Had a lot of support behind me, and it was an awesome day. Got the win, which is most important.”
Hundreds of people from De La Salle High School came to Oracle Park to watch the Danville native’s first Oracle Park outing. Just three years ago, he was serving lunches in the school cafeteria.
His parents sat field level, right behind home plate, with the most direct view of their son’s brilliance.
Harrison didn’t need any time to acclimate him with the friendly crowd. He struck out the first five Reds he faced, becoming the first Giant since Randy Johnson in 2009 to do so.
After Harrison’s first inning, the Oracle Park crowd gave him a standing ovation. They did the same after the second inning, when TJ Friedl fought off a fastball for CIN’s first ball in play — a lazy pop up.
“We feel like Kyle has a great chance to develop into a front-line starting pitcher,” manager Gabe Kapler, criminally underselling, said pregame.
Through three scoreless innings, Harrison punched out seven. He leaned heavily on his fastball, just like he did in his MLB debut against the Phillies.
That allowed the 22-year-old to feature his offspeed pitches against the top of the Reds’ lineup. A pair of the three pitches Harrison needed to discard De La Cruz for a second time were beautiful back-foot sliders.
The Reds made more solid contact in the fifth, but Harrison stranded two base runners with his 10th strikeout. After blowing a 95 mph fastball by TJ Hopkins, the rookie pumped his fist and screamed from the mound.
At that point, Harrison had thrown 71 pitches. He tossed 65 in his debut last week and is still ramping up to a full starter’s length.
Still, the Giants trusted him to take the sixth. Nobody was warming up in the pen. He rewarded their faith by tallying his 11th strikeout in an eight-pitch, 1-2-3 inning.
“Felt like this was a historic performance at that point, one that warranted an additional up — even though it wasn’t totally comfortable,” Kapler, who revealed Harrison was on a pitch count between 80 and 85, said. “He was that good and that deserving.”
Harrison was in line for the win, because the Giants collected a run in the first, two more in the third and another in the sixth. Patrick Bailey, Wilmer Flores and Wade Meckler each delivered big doubles.
Pitch count be damned, Gabe Kapler sent Harrison back out for the seventh inning. The lefty had allowed just three base runners in his already historically dominant start.
Harrison’s 85th pitch was a double down the left field line. His 91st was a walk — and his last of the game. The Giants cut him loose, allowing the starter to go from 65 to 91 pitches in six days. Even in the minors, he topped out at 83 before Monday night.
When Kapler walked out to the mound to remove Harrison, the manager reminded the rookie to take in the moment. “Drink it all in,” Kapler said.
“It was a long time coming, for sure,” Harrison said postgame. “Pretty cool for Kap to say ‘take this moment in,’ and I did. It was awesome.”
A perfect assist from Luis Matos in left field preserved both San Francisco’s 4-0 lead and Harrison’s pristine stat line.
Harrison finished with 6.1IP, 3H, 2BB and 11K. He threw 59 of his 91 pitches for strikes, shrugging off concerns over his command. Seven of the 12 whiffs he generated came from his fastball, which Kapler described as 80-grade and compared to that of Carlos Rodón’s.
“That was about as electric a performance by a pitcher as we’ve seen since I’ve been here in San Francisco,” Kapler said.
The Giants are approaching the end of a brutal August. Inspirational speeches can only help so much.
Harrison’s emergence, though, could change everything. Even Kapler, not one to overreact or speak in platitudes, seems to sense that.
“It’s worthy of getting a little higher,” Kapler said. “Don’t want to go too far over the top, but it’s exactly what our team needs: another guy, middle of the rotation, take the ball regularly, go deep into games. This is no guarantee that’s going to be how it is every time out, but he’s got the capability.
