Jacob Misiorowski is 24 years old and he is the NL Cy Young favorite. As of Aug. 28, the Brewers right-hander sat at 14-5 with a 1.73 ERA and 222 strikeouts in 151 innings.
That is not a good season. That is a season that reorganizes how you think about a pitcher.
Start with the strikeout pace, because it is the most absurd part. Misiorowski reached 200 strikeouts in 129 1/3 innings. The only pitcher to get there faster was Spencer Strider in 2022, who needed 123 1/3. Being second on a list where Strider’s 2022 is first is not a participation ribbon. That season was one of the great pure strikeout years of the modern era, and Misiorowski is the closest anyone has come to it.
He has also done something no Brewer had ever done, recording double-digit strikeouts 10 times in a single season. In a franchise with a long history and plenty of good arms, nobody had ever put together that many dominant individual starts in one year.
And the ERA has held all the way through. An earlier snapshot had him at 1.76 through 22 starts with 204 strikeouts in 133 innings. The August 28 line reads 1.73 across 151 innings. Those numbers barely moved as the workload grew, which is the opposite of what usually happens to a young pitcher in his first big season.
Here is the part I find most remarkable, and I mean that in the structural sense rather than the highlight sense. In his 2025 rookie year, Misiorowski threw hard and missed bats at a high rate, but he ranked in the 11th percentile in walk percentage. He was, statistically, one of the least precise pitchers in the league.
Pitchers like that usually stay pitchers like that. Elite velocity plus poor command is the most common profile in baseball, and the path from there to a sub-1.75 ERA over 150 innings is not a path most arms ever find. Stuff can be taught to a body. Control has to be built, and it takes most people years, if it comes at all.
Misiorowski appears to have done it in one offseason. That is the story of his year, more than the strikeout totals. The strikeouts were always coming. The walks going away is what turned him from an exciting young arm into the best pitcher in his league.
Context helps too, and it is worth being clear about the direction of the arrow. The Brewers have the best record in baseball. A team does not get there on one starter, but a starter posting a 1.73 ERA every fifth day is a large part of why a rotation holds up over six months.
Is the award locked? Nothing is locked in September, and a bad final month can move voters more than it should. Cy Young races have flipped on late-season stretches before.
But look at what a challenger would need to do. Someone has to close a gap on a pitcher sitting under a 1.75 ERA with 222 strikeouts, and has to do it in a handful of starts. That is not a race. That is a formality waiting on the calendar.
My call: Misiorowski wins it, and the only real debate left is whether the vote is unanimous. He is 24, he fixed the one thing holding him back, and he is doing it for the best team in baseball. There is nothing left for him to prove this year.
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.
