Jacob Misiorowski is already one of the most talked-about arms in baseball, and it’s not just because of the radar gun readings. The Milwaukee Brewers’ 22-year-old right-hander is throwing 103 and 104 miles per hour, but that alone doesn’t explain why Team USA manager and former big leaguer Mark DeRosa called him a “freak of nature” on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show.
DeRosa pointed to something more specific: what Misiorowski does when hitters know the fastball is coming.
“The ability, the extension, and its 103, 104, and the extension’s making it look even hotter,” DeRosa said. “He’s getting swings from big league hitters on heaters in heater counts that you just don’t see.”
That phrase “heater counts” is where the magic is. In a 1-0, 2-0, or 3-1 count, a hitter is usually sitting dead-red fastball, looking to ambush something middle-middle. Most pitchers in those spots either groove one and hope for the best or go off-speed to steal a strike back. Misiorowski just blows it past them anyway.
DeRosa broke it down like this: “If I’m in a three-one count and I look on deck, and I know I got like a Hall of Famer up behind me … I’ve had Josh Beckett in a 2-0 count look at the camera and go, like maybe the catcher puts a slider down, and he’d go, like, getting a four-seam cheeser right down your throat, and it’s like, all right, let’s go, let’s cheat to it.”
That kind of command in a count that screams “fastball” is rare. It’s one thing to light up a radar gun. It’s another to make a hitter look helpless when he knows what’s coming.
Misiorowski’s numbers this season back up the hype. Through July, he’s got a 1.62 ERA with 167 strikeouts and a 10-4 record. The strikeout rate is elite. The walk numbers have improved. And the stuff has translated at the big league level in a way that’s starting to feel less like a young flamethrower’s hot streak and more like a real breakout.
The long-term concern, of course, is health. Throwing 103 miles an hour puts torque on every joint in the arm, and baseball history is littered with electric arms that burned out fast. The Brewers have been careful with Misiorowski’s workload, but the human body wasn’t built to move a baseball at that speed over and over.
For now, though, Misiorowski is doing what few pitchers have done before. And when a manager who has seen the best of the best says he’s seeing something he’s never seen, people tend to pay attention.
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