Josh Harrison's professional baseball career began with a missed call.

Standing 5-foot-8, the young infielder had gone mostly unnoticed at Princeton High School in Cincinnati and wasn't selected in the 2005 Draft. Three big years at the University of Cincinnati, including a junior season in which he hit .378 with 32 steals en route to Big East Co-Player of the Year honors, and a solid 2007 campaign in the wood bat Cape Cod Baseball League changed those perceptions. With help from his brother, Vince, who was drafted twice before playing five seasons in the Minors, and uncle/Major League veteran John Shelby, Harrison knew what to expect in the 2008 Draft.

So he accompanied his mother, Bonita, to a Red Lobster and left his phone at home.

"It's a hectic process, but not a bad hectic," Harrison said. "There's a lot of anxiety and you're wondering over and over when you'll be taken. ... We just wanted to spend the day together, so I left the phone back because people kept asking, 'Oh, do you know when you'll be picked?' and this and that. My mom's like, 'The Draft's three hours -- we need to get away for a bit.' So when I got back, there were a lot of texts and calls about the whole thing."

What Harrison missed was being selected by the Cubs in the sixth round (191st overall). He signed that summer for $144,500 to officially become a pro ballplayer.

A trade, a big league debut and a trying 2012 season later, it was beginning to look to some that Harrison might have missed another call -- his chance at sustaining a productive Major League career. Heading into 2015, that call has been answered.

* * *

Harrison quickly found his footing with the Cubs, producing a .305/.379/.419 line with 18 steals in 64 games between short-season Boise and Class A Peoria as a 20-year-old rookie, but he didn't last long with his first organization.

By the following July, the compact right-handed hitter was showing that his offensive potential had carried over from college; he owned a .327 average with an .836 OPS, five homers, eight triples, 20 doubles and 26 steals through 97 games at Peoria and Class A Advanced Daytona. He'd seen time at second base, third base and left field.

You don't put up those kind of numbers without being noticed by someone, and it was the Pirates who took the chance to acquire the bat-first prospect with some defensive versatility. Harrison was shipped to Pittsburgh as the only position player in a late July deal that netted the contending Cubs pitchers Tom Gorzelanny and John Grabow.

Though acknowledging it's nice to feel wanted, Harrison admitted the business of baseball was moving all too quickly.

"As a player, you know trades happen, but you don't expect them to come in your first full season," he said. "I'm getting ready for a game and they pull me over to talk. They said, 'We've got good news for you, bad news for us,' and the only idea I had in my head was that I was going to Double-A, maybe. But they said, 'You've been traded to the Pirates. Thanks for everything, but you have to leave the dugout now.'

"Being traded is one of those things you just have to accept, but in this case, I was going in a trade to a team that saw a fit for me."

The first move: calling loved ones, including a somewhat flustered girlfriend [and future wife] who had planned to meet him in Daytona Beach but was told she had to redirect her flight to Lynchburg, Virginia, home of the Pirates' then-Carolina League affiliate. The second move: being told he would be moved out of left field. Harrison played 37 games out there with Cubs affiliates and was out there for his first game in Lynchburg. That experiment was coming to an end, however -- the Bucs planned to use him exclusively in the infield, where he'd played at Cincinnati.

While playing mostly third with some second base mixed in, Harrison continued to produce offensively in 2010, his first full season as a Pirate. He hit .300 with 33 doubles and 19 steals in 135 games at Double-A Altoona. Those numbers earned him a spot on the Eastern League midseason All-Star team and, later, an MiLB.com Pirates Organization All-Star nod. He also held his own in the Arizona Fall League (.330/.390/.516) against some of the game's better prospects.

The Pirates rewarded him the following spring, and though he had no more than a puncher's chance at making the 25-man roster, he did turn some heads. Dean Treanor, about to make his organizational managerial debut with Triple-A Indianpolis in 2011, was one of them.

"We really didn't know what to expect," the skipper said. "I didn't really have too much of anything on him and we really didn't know where he was going to fit in, position-wise. But what impressed me was he was very willing to be moved around, to go and do whatever we needed. Obviously, at Triple-A, it's still development, and guys like to stay at one place for that reason. But he was open to anything."

It helped that Harrison continued to force his way into the lineup with his bat. He was hitting .321 in 37 games with the Indians through May 29 -- a number reduced by an 0-for-4 effort against Pawtucket that day.

"In our lineup, he made a big difference," Treanor said. "He just exploded up there at the plate. Josh was one of those players that, even at Triple-A, he stood out. He has great energy and for the most part was defensively solid. He's just one of those guys you want to be around. We talked about it and based on what he saw, we felt he could play at the next level in some fashion. You don't say that about everyone here."

The reason we highlight May 29 is because after that game Treanor approached Harrison ("Man, what happened?" the latter thought, "I know I haven't done anything where I showed attitude.") with the following words, "I'm not gonna mess with you. You're going to the bigs tomorrow." Injuries to Steve Pearce and Pedro Alvarez left an open spot in the corner of the Pirates infield, and by showing his potential in the International League, Harrison was an easy choice to fill the hole.

The 23-year-old would yo-yo between the Majors and Triple-A a few more times that season. By his Indianapolis production alone (.319 average, .826 OPS), it was easy to say that Harrison was ready for the bigs. Despite poor plate discipline, he looked OK in Pittsburgh with a .272/.281/.374 Major League line and a 0.9 fWAR, albeit that number coming mostly on the strength of his defense at the hot corner.

Then came 2012.

On many levels, that year -- being his first full-time in the Majors -- should have been one to remember. Instead, it was pretty much the opposite. The Pirates remained committed to keeping Alvarez, the second overall pick in 2008, at third and he justified his spot by hitting 30 homers for the first time in his career. Second baseman Neil Walker continued to produce at a solid level, freezing Harrison out at his two primary positions.

Stuck with the utility label -- he played third, second, shortstop, left and right that season -- he totaled only 276 plate appearances and hit .233 with a .624 OPS in 104 games. His biggest struggles came as a sub. Harrison batted only .186 in games that he did not start compared to .263 in the opposite situation. Without regular playing time, he said couldn't maintain the sharpness that allowed him to bat above .300 in each of his four previous seasons in the Minors.

"I compare it to 9-to-5ers," he said. "If you work once a week, it's tough to be working at the same level as you would if you came in five times that week. It's no different for anything you do in sports. A backup quarterback isn't going to be as sharp as a starter. But particularly when it comes to baseball, it's something that you can't simulate -- facing a 92 mph fastball every day. That [schedule] was hard for me to get used to and was probably the biggest learning experience for me."

In many ways, 2013 was an even more critical year in determining Harrison's future. OK, his nose had been bloodied by some of the best arms in the game. He had been knocked down, literally to Triple-A by mid-April, with the Pirates signing Brandon Inge and John McDonald to fill out their Major League infield, and he needed to show he could climb his way back up. Baseball Prospectus wrote ahead of that season, "Figuring out why the Pirates like Harrison enough to keep him around is tough," and "Add in Harrison's upcoming 26th birthday, and the what-if game about his career will soon shift focus from the future to the past."

Back in the IL, Harrison made yet another move defensively, now focusing exclusively on the middle infield with shortstop becoming more of an emphasis. He continued to ride the Indianapolis-Pittsburgh express a few times in the first half of the season, but in his time with the Indians, he flashed more of the offensive potential that helped him climb from an undrafted player out of high school to a Major Leaguer.

"We talked a lot," Treanor said. "It's a very, very tough level. There are guys on their way up here, guys on their way down and many who aren't sure if they can play in the bigs. But there's something about him, some internal quality that drives him. He's one of the good guys."

Your browser does not support iframes.

By July 8, his Triple-A slash line was.317/.373/.507, and he'd shown improved pop for a player his size (29 doubles in 64 games) and had been named an IL midseason All-Star. The next day, he was a Pirate again and he hasn't been back in the Minors since.

Of course, his breakout big league season was 2014, when he leveraged a hot start (.800 OPS through two months) while keeping right field warm for top prospect Gregory Polanco -- once again, defensive versatility playing a big role -- to force his way back into a starting role (mostly at third) by midseason. His superb April and May were rewarded with a spot on the National League All-Star team, and when he finished with a .315 average, .837 OPS, 13 homers and 18 steals, he ended up ninth in MVP voting. Harrison's 4.9 fWAR ranked 25th among position players from both leagues.

On paper, that's a rare rise from struggling utility man to valuable piece on a contending team at such a critical time in a player's development. But for Harrison and those who worked with him, it was only a matter of time -- as long as he got the time he needed.

"I always knew I was capable," Harrison said. "I'm not a cocky guy by any means. I know it was only the Minors, but baseball is baseball. You don't put it on a pedestal just because this is the big leagues. This is what I've done my whole life. I deserve to be here, and this whole time I've tried to prove to people that's the case."

"It's just a great story," Treanor added. "It just goes to show you have to be careful when it comes to player development. There's no way this would have happened any other way. You can't give up on people. He stayed after it, busted his butt and now everyone knows about it."