Kyle Harrison matched a career high with 12 strikeouts and the Brewers beat the Giants 8-3 on Tuesday night at American Family Field, a sharp return against the club that drafted him and developed him before sending him away twice.
Harrison needed 5 2/3 innings to pile up the strikeouts, and he punched out Rafael Devers three times in the game. The left-hander has become one of Milwaukee’s most effective starters, going 7-1 with a 1.57 ERA, and his latest outing against San Francisco only sharpened the irony of the matchup.
The Giants drafted Harrison in the third round of the 2020 draft out of Concord’s De La Salle High School and once tried to keep him from attending UCLA with first-round money of $2.5 million. They later traded Harrison and three others to Boston for Devers last June, and Boston then dealt Harrison to the Brewers, who found a pitcher whose delivery has changed along with his address. Early in spring training, he was moved closer to the first-base side of the rubber and slightly raised his arm slot after adding a changeup.
That setup has fit Milwaukee. Harrison said it felt “kind of free” to be away from everything while pitching far from family and friends in the Bay Area, and he added that he missed his former Giants teammates even as he worked through a game in which Devers saw 20 pitches from him. The Giants, meanwhile, have dropped seven of their last eight and spent another night watching a pitcher they once built beat them with the kind of command they could have used themselves.
Harrison figures to keep coming up in the National League, and he is pitching like a starter who could keep forcing the discussion. The question now is not whether Tuesday night was a one-off, but whether Milwaukee keeps giving him the ball while the Giants keep seeing what they let get away.
