Milwaukee Brewers’ star pitcher, Jacob Misiorowski, initiated Friday’s contest by delivering the quickest pitch ever documented from a starting hurler. He concluded the game by achieving his inaugural career shutout and delivering one of the most remarkable performances in Major League Baseball’s annals.
Displaying an unprecedented level of velocity for a starting pitcher, the right-handed hurler completely shut down the Philadelphia Phillies over nine frames, leading to a 6-0 victory for the Brewers. His impressive final statistics were: fifteen strikeouts, allowing only one hit, zero walks, and zero runs, all accomplished with ninety-five pitches. He managed to face the minimum number of batters through the entire nine innings, given that the single hit he yielded in the fourth inning was nullified by a subsequent double play.
In essence: Misiorowski delivered a “Maddux” performance, striking out fifteen batters in a shutout completed with fewer than one hundred pitches, all while confronting the fewest possible opposing hitters and establishing a new velocity benchmark. This achievement is particularly remarkable considering he had never previously pitched past the seventh inning in his professional career. Such a combination of feats is truly unparalleled on several fronts.
The initial batter Misiorowski confronted was Kyle Schwarber, the Philadelphia Phillies’ powerful hitter and Major League Baseball’s leading home run producer. With a two-balls, two-strikes count, Misiorowski retired him with a caught foul tip from a fastball, which the broadcast indicated registered at 105 miles per hour.
According to Major League Baseball’s proprietary pitch tracking information, the precise speed was 104.5 miles per hour, a figure still sufficient to surpass the 103.7 mph mark Misiorowski had established just days earlier on Sunday.
Misiorowski continued his dominance by striking out all three batters in the inning, dispatching Trea Turner in four pitches and Bryce Harper in three. Even his slowest fastball during that twelve-pitch opening frame clocked in at 102.3 mph, with three additional pitches exceeding the 104 mph threshold. Consequently, Misiorowski did not merely surpass his own previous record once, but achieved this feat four separate times within that single inning.
While Misiorowski did not replicate that extreme velocity peak later in the contest, his performance remained equally commanding throughout the subsequent eight innings. He delivered fifty-eight pitches traveling at or above 100 mph, maintaining an average speed of 101.7 mph over the course of the evening.
He did not allow a single batter to reach a three-ball count during the entire game.
Philadelphia hitters missed twenty-four of their forty-one swings against his fastball, resulting in an astonishing 59% whiff percentage. He accumulated more swings-and-misses than pitches thrown for balls. His earned run average for the current season now registers at 1.34, representing the leading figure among all qualified Major League Baseball pitchers (a category which, notably, excludes Shohei Ohtani).
The absolute quickest pitch ever recorded continues to be held by Boston Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman, who achieved his peak velocity of 105.8 mph back in 2010. This indicates Misiorowski would need to bridge a 1.3 mph difference to match the all-time record – a significant increase at such extreme speeds, yet seemingly within the realm of possibility for the imposing 6-foot-7 pitcher.
Beyond his impressive velocity figures, Misiorowski has simply established himself as one of baseball’s premier pitchers this current season. With his standout performance alongside Los Angeles Dodgers sensation Shohei Ohtani and Philadelphia Phillies star Cristopher Sánchez, the competition for this year’s Cy Young Award appears set to be among the fiercest in recent memory.
