Baseball is a fickle game.
The hardest hit balls can go right at someone. The little bloopers can drop in for hits.
Over the course of a long season, the luck is meant to even out. But in the early going, it can often be quite unfair.
That’s the way the season is going so far for Atlanta Braves centerfielder Michael Harris.
Harris, by one measure, has been the unluckiest hitter in MLB so far in the 2026 campaign.
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The stat that allows us to make that claim? Expected slugging percentage.
Harris has an expected slugging of .706, which is based on exit velocity and launch angle data.
His actual slugging so far is just .379.
The difference of .327 points of slugging is the largest gap in baseball between expected and actual slugging for any player whose output is worse than the metrics suggest.
Harris is batting just .241 with one home run and a .620 OPS.
That’s despite ranking in the 92nd percentile in MLB in both average exit velocity (95.2 MPH) and barrel percentage (20.8%).
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Harris is also limiting his strikeouts to just 17.2% of his at bats, a rate in about the top third of hitters.
All of this should add up to his contact doing damage, but so far, he’s done almost no actual productive damage on his swings.
Harris will have to just keep doing what he’s doing, because the baseball gods will come around on his input eventually to give him better output.