Jacob Misiorowski Is Having the Best Pitching Season Nobody Outside Milwaukee Is Talking About
Jacob Misiorowski threw six shutout innings against the Braves on Friday. That was start number 22 of a season that should have every Cy Young voter’s ballot already filled out in pen.
The numbers are absurd. A 1.76 ERA. 204 strikeouts in 133 innings. An 11-5 record on a Brewers team that scores like it is 1968. A 204-to-30 strikeout-to-walk ratio that puts him in the conversation with the best single seasons this decade.
He also owns the fastest recorded fastball ever thrown by a starting pitcher. 105.5 miles per hour. That is not a typo.
Opponents are hitting .151 against him. His 37.8 percent whiff rate is in the 98th percentile. His expected ERA is 2.23. Every underlying metric backs the surface stats. This is not a mirage built on soft contact luck. This is a 24-year-old kid throwing the hardest starter fastball in the sport with the strike-throwing feel of a 10-year veteran.
So why is nobody outside of Wisconsin talking about him with the reverence he deserves?
Part of it is market. Milwaukee is a small-market team that does not get the East Coast late-night highlight treatment. Part of it is competition. Paul Skenes exists. Tarik Skubal exists. Zack Wheeler is Zack Wheeler.
But look at the receipts. Misiorowski is leading MLB in ERA and strikeouts simultaneously. That is not a debate. That is a Cy Young case that runs itself. The last pitcher to lead the league in both was Jacob deGrom in 2018, and everybody agreed pretty quickly on how that one turned out.
The Brewers are in first place in the NL Central, and Misiorowski is the reason. Christian Yelich has aged into a role player. The rotation behind Miz has been solid without being spectacular. This team is going to the playoffs because a 24-year-old flame thrower with a career 133 innings pitched decided to become the best pitcher in the sport overnight.
The scary part for the rest of the National League is what October looks like. A short series against a rotation with a healthy Misiorowski at the top is the last thing any offense wants to see. He is unhittable when he is right, and he has been right since June.
Give this kid the attention he has earned. The Cy Young race in the NL is over. Everyone else is playing for second.
Milwaukee finally has a superstar. The rest of baseball had better start paying attention before he strikes out their whole team in a wild card game.
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.
