Jacob Misiorowski is having among the many most dominant pitching seasons we’ve ever seen. What does he must do to get it up there with the all-time greats?
In a current piece I did concerning the best single season pitching seasons, I rapidly talked about within the intro that Misiorowski was on tempo for an all-time season if he saved up his present tempo earlier than launching into verbose soliloquies about 2018 Jacob deGrom and 1985 Dwight Gooden. However the blueprint was there; if we have now some sense of what makes the very best pitching seasons, absolutely we are able to get The Miz to that degree.
Two elements persistently coloured my rating: dominance relative to different pitchers in the identical time (why steroid-era Pedro Martinez in 1999-2000 was the best pitcher ever) and statistical outliers prolonged over a full season. Misiorowski wants a real mathematical trump card that can be seen and apparent to everybody for the remainder of time. For Misiorowski, that’s at present his ERA: 1.45, the very best ever save for 1968 Bob Gibson (quantity three on my different checklist) and his patently absurd 1.12 ERA in over 300 innings pitched. That determine is so good it wants extra context, specifically that the strike zone was a lot bigger than it’s right this moment in 1968, and Gibson’s dominance — together with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale — led to rule adjustments that fastened that. Misiorowski would, for all intents and functions, cross 1985 Dwight Gooden for the very best non-“juiced zone” ERA ever.*
(*every time I say “ever” on this piece, I typically imply since 1945, since I feel post-World Battle II is an effective start line for pitching legacy conversations given many gamers returned from navy service, integration started quickly after and pitchers stopped pitching 19 billion innings per 12 months. It simply wasn’t the identical sport for pitchers earlier than.)
However ERA is a flawed statistic, and never essentially nice at capturing true pitcher efficiency. I additionally like ERA estimators like FIP and SIERA, principally ERA-scale stats that attempt to right for issues pitchers can’t management like protection and balls in play. I solely have SIERA knowledge going again to 2002, however Misiorowski can be third all-time within the SIERA membership behind 2014 Clayton Kershaw (fourth on my checklist) and 2002 Curt Schilling (by .01). As for FIP, or fielding unbiased pitching, good at telling you which ones pitchers stop runs by themselves slightly than with defensive assist, Misiorowski is in hallowed floor. Since 1945, he trails solely 2021 Corbin Burnes (FIP god for some purpose) and 1999 Pedro Martinez — primary on my checklist and the undisputed king of pitching seasons.
It’s possible you’ll be considering “what do I care about FIP? I’ve by no means even heard of that till now!” However I guarantee you, FIP is a strong factor, and Misiorowski being a FIP and ERA god is nice for different historic markers, specifically Wins Above Alternative (WAR), calculated by two web sites in a different way. “bWAR” from Baseball-References depends extra on runs allowed, whereas “fWAR” from FanGraphs is FIP-based. Misiorowski is insane at each, which means if he retains this up, his WAR quantity might go down as an all-timer — he’s already on tempo for about 10 WAR proper now, a bonkers achievement for a beginning pitcher within the age of the reliever.
However Misiorowski’s greatness goes past this numerical soups I’ve simply concocted. He’s additionally tremendous cool as a result of he throws tremendous laborious and refuses to throw slower. He threw 47 pitches above 101 mph in a loss to Atlanta, which is the report for a starter. He threw a pitch to strikeout Kyle Schwarber that clocked in at 105 mph, the quickest ever from a starter. In 2026, he ratcheted up his four-seam fastball utilization up nearly 10 p.c from 2025 to a ridiculous 64 p.c, the very best within the majors by so much and the second highest within the Statcast period (since 2015) behind solely 2017 Kevin Gausman. MLB has moved away from lots of fastballs and in direction of fewer-but-better fastballs, however Misiorowski pulled as much as the membership and mentioned “nah, I’ll simply throw extra, higher fastballs.”
And why not? Utilizing Baseball Savant’s wonderful new swing timing + miss distance knowledge, we are able to see that 2026 Jacob Misiorowski’s fastball is among the many most unhittable pitches since they began monitoring in 2023. I might go as far as to say it’s the single least hittable pitch since it’s a fastball producing a 44 p.c whiff charge. That’s not one thing you’re supposed to have the ability to do, and Misiorowski’s fastball is straight-up the very best swing-and-miss fastball within the Majors since at the least 2023 (in all probability longer) amongst each starters and relievers.
I don’t know if my profuse use of italics is underscoring how impossibly not possible it’s that Misiorowski is placing up these sorts of numbers, however even in the event you don’t like numbers, we even have historic intrigue: Misiorowski is on tempo for one of many best seasons ever, however he’s really not essentially the most on tempo anybody has ever been.
That title goes to 2021 Jacob deGrom, who was, in the event you can imagine it, a wildly superior model of 2026 Misiorowski via principally the very same variety of innings pitched. He has a 1.08 ERA (can be the very best ever) a 1.24 FIP (can be the very best ever) and struck out 14.28 per 9 innings (can be the very best ever). And that’s the place it stands right this moment; deGrom obtained injured and missed the remainder of the season, which means he pitched by far the best half-season ever. That is what Misiorowski must keep away from.
He throws laborious, everyone knows that, and whereas it’s generally debated whether or not velocity is the actual perpetrator for UCL accidents and tears, it’s clearly a priority that Misiorowski could not be capable to maintain this pitching output that’s like he’s the Winter Soldier with a vibranium arm. However I don’t speculate about accidents; I speculate if that is sustainable for the remainder of the season.
anticipated statistics, Misiorowski is overperforming primarily based on his contact high quality, however so is each pitcher who’s ever had an awesome season within the historical past of ever. And he’s not really overperforming by that a lot — most of his anticipated numbers are inside sufficiently small margins to not take a lot inventory in them, and the discrepancy is usually as a result of it isn’t speculated to be attainable to create this type of swing-and-miss with a fastball as a starter. It’s legitimately unprecedented stuff.
Perhaps that may regress, and perhaps Misiorowski will begin getting barreled later within the 12 months. However I might see a world the place we glance again on 2026 Misiorowski and consider one of many best pitching seasons within the historical past of baseball. So I recommend all of us drink it in whereas we’ve obtained it.
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