Jacob Misiorowski threw a 104.5 mph fastball on Friday night — the fastest pitch ever recorded in an MLB game — and then spent his postgame interview explaining why he felt like he didn’t have it.
That contradiction sums up the 24-year-old Brewers right-hander in a single breath. Milwaukee blanked the Phillies 6-0, with Misiorowski spinning nine shutout innings and striking out 15 batters. He also made history by topping radar guns at 104.5 mph, a mark nobody had reached before in the majors.
But when MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy asked for his assessment, Misiorowski didn’t lead with the milestone. He led with the struggle.
“To be honest, the first few innings, I feel like I didn’t have it all that well,” he said. “I was just hoping they would swing. They were hacking away, so that helped a lot.”
A New Standard That Still Felt Off
Misiorowski acknowledged he knew his velocity was present, but that didn’t mean everything clicked right away.
“I think I was just trying to push it a little bit to feel something,” he said. “It just started coming out.”
He pinpointed the fifth inning as the moment his stuff started matching the radar readings. “Probably the 5th, it started feeling good.”
That admission — from a pitcher who already owns an 8-2 record, a 1.34 ERA, and 131 strikeouts this season — says everything about the ceiling scouts have been projecting since he entered the league last year. His fastball-slider-curveball combination has drawn comparisons to some of the nastiest arsenals in baseball. Brewers manager Pat Murphy likened Misiorowski to Forrest Gump: young, irreverent, and breathtaking.
Where the Brewers Stand
Milwaukee now sits at 42-25, five games clear of the Cardinals atop the NL Central. Misiorowski has emerged as a front-runner for the National League Cy Young Award, a trajectory that seemed aggressive when he broke into the league but no longer surprises anyone watching him work.
If this is what his bad nights look like, the rest of the division has a real problem.
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