I’ve been out of town for the past week, and therefore missed the four-game series at Harbor Park between Charlotte and the Tides. I returned to work last night’s Durham game, which the Tides won 3-2. Once again, I got to see Brendan Harris play shortstop.

Since I last commented on Brendan Harris, the Tides have made the usual personnel changes. The change most relevant to Harris are the promotion of Josh Bell to Baltimore and the corresponding promotion of Carlos Rojas to Norfolk. How does all this affect Brendan Harris? Bell was the Tides’ third baseman, and couldn’t play anywhere else. Rojas is a good defensive infielder, but can’t hit at all, and thus isn’t a candidate to be a major-league utilityman. Since both Harris and Rojas are now in the Organization Player stage of their career. manager Gary Allenson can use them to try to win games instead of developing their skills for the major leagues. So, Rojas is now the most-regular shortstop, meaning Harris can play third base.

Last night, manager Allenson gave Rojas the night off, and so Harris filled in at shortstop. For whatever reason, Harris made several good plays. The most memorable came in the seventh inning. With runners on first and second and no outs, Durham’s Leslie Anderson hit a ground ball to the left of second. The ball took a sudden sharp hop but Harris was able to stay with it, race to second for a force out, and then throw to first in time to get Anderson for the double play.

Harris did commit an error, when he got to a ground ball hit up the middle and made an ill-advised throw into the first-base dugout (it went as a single and error.) But I may have been a little bit too harsh on Harris earlier; he’ll never be a great shortstop but he may be adequate.