Jacob Misiorowski Reaches 10 Wins, Leads MLB in Strikeouts. Are the Brewers About to Have a Cy Young Winner?
Jacob Misiorowski just became the seventh pitcher in the National League to reach 10 wins. He also just widened his lead as the MLB strikeout leader. And he is a rookie.
The Brewers’ 22-year-old ace beat the Cardinals 4-3 in his most recent start, striking out 10 in the process. That gave him back-to-back double-digit strikeout performances after 11 strikeouts in his previous outing. He now leads all of baseball with 167 total strikeouts, a 30-K margin over the next-closest pitcher.
Those numbers are stacked next to some genuinely absurd underlying stats. He posted a 0.23 ERA in the month of May, which is the kind of number that shouldn’t be physically possible for a major league starter. His 1.50 season ERA leads MLB. His 0.81 WHIP leads MLB. His expected ERA of 2.23 and expected FIP of 2.21 also lead MLB. This is not a fluke. This is the best starting pitcher in baseball right now, and he barely qualifies for the rookie of the year discussion.
The velocity is what everyone wants to talk about. Misiorowski threw a 103.7 mph pitch against the Colorado Rockies on June 6. That is the fastest pitch ever recorded by a starting pitcher in the pitch-tracking era, which goes back to 2008. Not a relief pitcher. A starter. In the sixth inning. That is a physical outlier that only a handful of pitchers in baseball history could match.
He has the fastball. He has the slider. He has the changeup he learned from Corbin Burnes back when Burnes was still in Milwaukee. He has the demeanor of a guy who understands he is the best pitcher on every mound he steps on. That last piece is what usually separates ace-caliber talent from ace-caliber production.
The Cy Young case now becomes real. Misiorowski’s numbers are dominant enough that even if he regresses over the second half, he has already banked enough elite starts to compete for the award. Paul Skenes is the incumbent NL Cy Young front-runner heading into the year. Misiorowski has already outperformed him in raw production.
What matters now is health and workload. Misiorowski is at 112 innings through 18 starts. He is on pace to throw around 200 innings, which is a heavy but not extreme load. The Brewers have been managing his usage carefully, giving him extra rest between starts when the schedule allows. Milwaukee is doing everything right to protect the asset.
The Brewers as a whole are 54-38, tied with the Cubs at the top of the NL Central. Misiorowski is the reason. Freddy Peralta has been solid but not spectacular. The rest of the rotation has ranged from decent to concerning. Milwaukee’s pitching identity right now is 90 percent Misiorowski and 10 percent everything else.
That is a fragile championship formula. If Misiorowski gets hurt in August, the Brewers immediately become a fringe wild-card team instead of a division favorite. If he stays healthy through October, Milwaukee has the best starting pitcher going in any postseason series they play.
The Cy Young Award is coming into focus. Rookie of the Year is a lock. He needs to just keep doing what he is doing and Milwaukee will have its first Cy Young winner since Corbin Burnes in 2021.
Watch every start he makes for the rest of the season. This is the kind of pitching stretch that only a handful of players in any generation get to put together.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
