“Senior Trey wouldn't like Freshman Trey."
It's easy to look at Trey Harris as the man leading Missouri's charge back to the brink of the NCAA Baseball Tournament for the first time in six years and think this was the path his career was always destined to take. If only it were that simple.
Harris is the heart that makes this Missouri team pump. He’s embraced his role as the star player and senior leader, and it appears he’s made it all seamless.
But when Harris arrived in Columbia from Powder Springs, Georgia, in the summer of 2014, it definitely wasn’t smooth. He said so himself.
Harris was a fantastic player coming out of high school, ranked by Perfect Game as the No. 304 overall high school prospect and the No. 2 second baseman in the country. He carried that into an impressive freshman year at Missouri, when he batted .263/.307/.376 in 52 games. But adapting to his new life was not easy.
When watching Harris play and speak during interviews in 2018, it’s clear that he’s found a strong balance of unabashed confidence on the field with a distinct professionalism off of it. That balance wasn’t there when he was a freshman.
“I was very immature,” Harris said. “ I didn’t know how to go about my business. I didn’t really know how to kind of play the game and practice the right way and do the little things the right way."
“In terms of growth, he was sort of your typical freshman,” Krista Gray, who worked as an Academic Coordinator at Mizzou from 2013 to 2017, said.
Though Gray didn’t work closely with the baseball team — she primarily spent her time with the softball and men’s basketball teams — the two formed a natural relationship as they talked while Harris waited in the hallway to meet with the baseball team’s coordinator, whose office was next door. As they grew closer, it came to the point where Harris would wait in Gray’s office instead of the hallway.
Harris and Gray would go on to have countless conversations both of them would label as honest and forthright. They allowed Harris to open up about the realities of his unique situation.
“It was tough for him being away from home while trying to balance high-level athletics with the demands of school,” Gray said. “But also still trying to figure out how to be a college student as well, what that all looked like and how to manage it all.”
Harris testifies that his relationship with Gray is one of the primary factors that helped him settle in — “As cheesy as it sounds, it was like a mother-son relationship,” Gray said — but his struggles persisted.
Despite an encouraging first year on the field, Harris saw a significant drop in production in his second. His batting average, on base percentage and slugging all dropped, and his home run count dropped from four to just one. He struck out less and walked more, but Harris tried hitting nearly every pitch that came his way, which resulted in making constant poor contact on pitches outside the strike zone.
“I think I’ve always been able to see pitches, but I was one of those kids that wanted to hit every fastball he sees,” Harris said. “But not every fastball is something you should be swinging at. When I was struggling, it was because I was swinging outside the zone. I think now it’s about seeing every pitch like I want to.”
Having an OPS of .589 is not ideal for an outfielder who plays in nearly every game. Neither is a decrease in offensive production from one year to the next. The writing was on the wall for Harris, and if not for a sudden turnaround at the plate, who knows what his playing time or his position would have looked like?
It’s no coincidence that as Steve Bieser and Dillon Lawson arrived in Columbia, that sudden transformation occurred.
Before serving as Missouri’s hitting coach in 2017, Lawson worked under Bieser for three-and-a-half years at Southeast Missouri State. A large reason Bieser received the opportunity to coach the Tigers came from his success in Cape Girardeau: In four years, he led SEMO to a 138-97 record and three consecutive first-place finishes in the Ohio Valley Conference.
Bieser and Lawson carried a distinct offensive approach that brought significant results when coaching together. In 2017, Missouri saw a drastic increase in walks, a direct result of their process.
“It’s always just surrounded getting a good pitch to hit,” Lawson said. “It’s not a passive thing where we’re just looking to walk. It’s just the fact that we’re uncompromising to swinging at anything that isn’t in the strike zone. We’re just not going to do it.”
Harris is the hallmark of this mindset. Lawson was only able to work with him for one season, but that season brought Harris groundbreaking success.
With an offensive approach of only swinging at pitches he could hit hard, Harris’ OPS jumped over 300 points from .589 in 2016 to .896 in 2017. He hit a team-leading 12 home runs and nearly doubled his walk count. All the while, he even struck out less.
Harris continues to succeed at the plate this year — he’s slashing .308/.413/.495 and is leading the team in home runs again with nine.
Harris’ ascension from one year to the next cannot be solely attributed to a simple change in mindset at the plate. As he grew into a great player on the field, a similar transgression occurred off the field, where he developed the aforementioned maturity as he grew older.
“He’s just grown up,” Gray said. “The decisions that he was making as a freshman are not the same decisions he’s making now. He’s learned how to prioritize. He knows that, yes, baseball is really important to him and could take him to the next level and open up lots of opportunities, but he also understands the importance of school and how the things outside of school play into being a student athlete and getting to that next level. Especially this last year and a half, he’s been big on trying to be out in the community more.”
Perhaps it’s fitting that as Harris has blossomed into one of the best players in the SEC, he’s also blossomed as a person. Perhaps it only makes sense that the Harris who hits key home runs in big games is the same guy that takes pictures with kids on the field after such games and comes close to tears when talking about a teammate who suffered a traumatic injury.
Harris’ attitude and the constant smile he wears across his face are something that comes out of a baseball movie, not the routine grind of SEC baseball. Where as a freshman he may have carried out his actions with his own benefit in mind, Harris now speaks of his teammates more than himself. Knowing what it was like to wear the black and gold as a freshman, he comes from a position of experience.
“As an older senior, you realize how important your teammates are,” Harris said. “Like I said, I wouldn’t like Freshman Trey because he was really selfish. He didn’t care to get to know his teammates and really understand them. I think Senior Trey has learned that your teammates are the biggest reason to play. When I go 0-4, I’m not mad at myself. I’m mad because I feel like I let my team down.”
“He started making changes as a person for the better,” Lawson said. “It’s almost like a coming of age story. It’s really exciting to be a part of, but he’s put a lot of work into it. He deserves a lot of credit for that, because he’s had many times where he could have just packed it in, and he chose not to do that.”
The journey of Trey Harris has culminated in a player that leads his team in at bats, runs, home runs, RBIs, slugging and on base percentage. His .857 stolen base rate leads is tops on the Tigers. He hasn’t made an error in right field in 85 opportunities. Harris has dragged along a lineup that’s been without Kameron Misner for nearly a month.
Harris has shined, but the personal accolades would pale in comparison to being able to help his team to the NCAA Tournament. That dream was a tangible reality a few weeks back, when Missouri took a home series against Vanderbilt and found itself in prime position in the race.
“It would mean everything, for me and the program,” Harris said. “The fall, the running, the puking, all of this work. Making the postseason would make everything worth it.
But the past two SEC series have not been kind to the Tigers, who have gone 1-5 in their last six conference games after losing a series in Kentucky and being swept by Georgia at home. Missouri is now in last place in the SEC East, and its last two remaining conference series against South Carolina and Tennessee could determine their fate, both for the conference tournament and beyond.
Missouri is 32nd in RPI, which is great considering its 9-15 SEC record, but the latest D1 Baseball projections have left the Tigers out of the field. One would think the Tigers need to win four or five of the remaining conference games to feel safe — three at the bare minimum.
Whatever happens — whether Missouri embarks on an unlikely run to the College World Series or misses out on the SEC Tournament altogether — Harris will always wear that smile, no matter where life takes him.
“He totally loves everything he does,” Gray said. “When he’s committed to something, it’s 100%. It’s passion. His celebrations are 100% Trey. It’s completely him as a person to go out and have a good time and celebrate and enjoy what he’s doing.”
