Jacob Misiorowski just did something that has never been done in the modern era of baseball, and I am furious that I had to find out about it by accident.
On June 12th, the Milwaukee Brewers’ 24-year-old right-hander walked off American Family Field having thrown a 15-strikeout complete game shutout on 95 pitches — a 1-hitter, a 6-0 win over the Philadelphia Phillies, and a statistical contradiction that shouldn’t exist. A Maddux — the complete game shutout in under 100 pitches named for Greg Maddux, who built a Hall of Fame career on efficiency and deception — is supposed to be about minimalism. Get in, get out, use your stuff wisely, don’t waste anyone’s time. It is not supposed to coexist with 15 punchouts. You don’t strike out 15 major leaguers in 95 pitches. You don’t do both things. Except Misiorowski did, making it the first 15-K Maddux on record since pitch tracking began in 1988 — and possibly the first one ever.
The previous record for strikeouts in a Maddux was 13, held jointly by Clayton Kershaw in 2017 and Tarik Skubal last May. Misiorowski didn’t edge that record. He didn’t inch past it. He took it out back and shot it.
https://twitter.com/OptaSTATS/status/2065611733872336908
Let’s go through what actually happened, because the Phillies lineup he was working against wasn’t a collection of scrubs. Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper, Trea Turner — that’s an All-Star parade. Misiorowski struck out Schwarber on a 104.5 mph fastball in the first inning, which was, at that moment, the fastest pitch ever thrown by a starting pitcher in the pitch-tracking era. He struck out Harper on 104.1. He struck out Turner on 103.5. The Phillies swung at 34 of the 58 pitches he threw at 100 mph or harder. They whiffed on 21 of them. Pat Murphy, the Brewers manager, said afterward: “To pitch a game like that, against an offense like that, with all those All-Stars over there. Incredible, incredible performance.” That is the kind of quote a manager gives when he genuinely does not have better words available.
The game score was 100. According to Heavy.com, that has happened only 17 times in MLB nine-inning history — making it rarer than a perfect game. Misiorowski is only the fourth pitcher to face the minimum number of batters while posting a game score of 100 or better, joining Sandy Koufax, Matt Cain, and Randy Johnson. You read that right. The other three names on that list are three of the most dominant pitchers in baseball history. The fourth is a 24-year-old in Milwaukee who you probably couldn’t have picked out of a lineup three months ago.
Schwarber did get a single in the fourth inning, the one blemish, but it was immediately erased by a double play. So Misiorowski effectively faced 27 batters and retired all 27. He just happened to get one of the outs the slow way.
What makes this genuinely maddening — beyond the sheer what-the-hell quality of the numbers — is what it sits inside. His ERA on the season is under 1.50. His WHIP is 0.81. His strikeout-to-walk ratio is 116-to-22. The 0.17 ERA he posted over the eight starts leading into this game is one of the lowest sustained stretches any starting pitcher has managed in the modern era. Over his last nine starts coming into this week, he has a 0.45 ERA and 87 strikeouts. He has shut out opponents in six of his last seven starts. Sports Illustrated ran a headline reading “Brewers May Never See Another Run Like Jacob Misiorowski’s,” which, when a national outlet bothers to notice at all, means the numbers have gotten so absurd that ignoring them became professionally embarrassing.
Don Mattingly, managing the Phillies, said after the game: “You don’t see guys that are consistent like him” at throwing 100-plus miles per hour for an entire outing. William Contreras, who was catching, put it the clearest: “This is not a normal pitcher…he can throw 100 fastballs and get through a game.” That last part is what separates Misiorowski from every other power arm in the sport right now. Velocity without control is a prospect. Velocity with command is a problem. What Misiorowski showed on June 12th was something else entirely — violence applied with surgical precision, 95 pitches worth of it, 74 of them strikes, against one of the best offenses in the National League.
After the ninth inning started, Misiorowski said his “whole body shivered and the adrenaline really kicked in.” He finished anyway. Then he said, about whatever comes next: “I think there’s always another step to go with it, so keep pushing it.”
The national media is asleep at the wheel on this, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed a mid-market team for more than five minutes and understands what the league’s new CBA means for small-market teams and how the machinery of baseball coverage defaults to the coasts and the big contracts. The Brewers are in Milwaukee. Their star pitcher is 24 years old and doesn’t have a signature shoe deal or a national media profile. So he goes out and dismantles one of baseball’s best lineups in under 100 pitches in a way that hasn’t been done in at least 38 years, and the conversation moves on to whatever Aaron Judge did that night.
Meanwhile, Misiorowski is just out there building the best pitching season in recent memory, one historic start at a time, in a city the sports world mostly treats as a layover. The hell of it is, he’s not even done yet.
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