Michael Harris II was one of the most egregious All-Star snubs of the season. He put up a .296 batting average, an .816 OPS and 16 home runs in the season’s first half. Part of the reason may have been because the Atlanta Braves already had five representatives in the Midsummer Classic, and part of it may have been because space was needed on the roster to add a representative from all 15 National League teams. Whatever the ill-conceived reason for Harris’ exclusion, his performance on the field in 2026 make the story of his 2025 campaign that much better.

After winning the National League Rookie of the Year Award in 2022, Harris put up similar numbers in 2023 and took a slight step back in 2024. But in 2025, Harris’s season could only be described as ‘Jekyll & Hyde.’ Going into the break, he was hitting just .210 with a .551 OPS – a mark that ranked worst in the league among all qualified hitters. Harris also experienced his own personal ‘dead ball era’, only hitting 6 home runs in 93 games.

But baseball is a game of constant adjustments. In the second half of the 2025 season, Michael Harris II widened his stance and raised his hands, from chest height in April to up around his head in August. He returned to where his hands were in his high school days, a stance that made him a 3^rd round pick in the 2019 Draft.

After the change, Harris II caught fire. He hit .299, hit 14 home runs, and nearly doubled his slugging percentage and OPS from the first half. He produced one of the most drastic second-half turnarounds in modern baseball history and also secured a 20/20 season. In short, Michael Harris II returned to his award-winning rookie form and put up huge numbers. He went from statistically the WORST hitter in baseball in the first half of 2025 to one of the best hitters in the 2^nd half.

Harris carried that form straight through the first half of the 2026 season, so it’s no wonder that he was upset that he didn’t get the call to this year’s All-Star game in Philadelphia, because it’s hard to make a case that there have been many better hitters in the game in the last calendar year than Atlanta’s Michael Harris II. His nickname is “Money Mike”, and he certainly has the Braves seeing green.