Three games into his career, Jacob Misiorowski has yet to encounter a foe that can match up with his flame-throwing repertoire: Not the St. Louis Cardinals, the Minnesota Twins nor the Pittsburgh Pirates.
And you can add Paul Skenes to that list.
Skenes, one of the game’s most dominant pitchers in just his second season, went up against the Milwaukee Brewers right-hander, who only just began his freshman season in Dairyland. And Misiorowski’s near-perfect start to his career rumbled on despite the formidable opposition.
He struck out eight batters over five scoreless innings while Skenes suffered through one nightmare inning exacerbated by Pittsburgh’s poor defense in Milwaukee’s 4-2 victory.
Misiorowski set a major league record by giving up just three hits in his first three starts – with a minimum 16 innings pitched – edging the Oakland Athletics’ Mike Norris, who gave up four hits in three starts in 1975.
Oh, nobody’s quite ready to put Misiorowski, 23, up there with Skenes, who’s actually two months his junior. It is Skenes who put together a Rookie of the Year season and backed it up with a sophomore campaign in which he’s struck out 110 in 106 innings, putting him on track to make a second consecutive All-Star Game start.
But Misiorowski’s first three starts were certainly ones for the record books.
Rare heat
He’d already made history coming into Wednesday: Misiorowski became the first pitcher since 1900 to have more wins than hits given up in his first two career starts. Yep, that’s just one hit over his first 11 innings, which included five no-hit innings in his major league debut against St. Louis.
That start ended when he rolled his ankle in the sixth inning, though his four walks given up might have prevented a shot at a no-hitter, anyway. The 6-7 kid they call the ‘Miz’ backed that up with six innings of one-hit, one-run ball at Minnesota, setting the stage for this showdown.
The two did not disappoint: Misiorowski threw 19 pitches of at least 100 mph, topping out at 102.4. Skenes also topped triple digits with a first-inning fastball, just the third time in the pitch-tracking era that two pitchers topped 100 in the same game.
And Misiorowski produced more fireball fodder: His five pitches of at least 102 mph trails only Hunter Greene (11), Justin Verlander and Jordan Hicks (6) in the pitch-tracking era. And the man has pitched just three games.
Brewers manager Pat Murphy had set a pitch count of around 75 and Misiorowski did him one better, completing five scoreless innings in 74 throws, striking out eight and walking two. He has seven walks in 16 innings, a bit of cleanup he’ll have to work on, but for now a problem he can simply punch out of.
Walk worries
Meanwhile, Skenes got sideways just once Wednesday, but it was enough to ruin his day. Milwaukee loaded the bases on two walks and a single, but what could have been a limited-damage inning got worse when center fielder Oneil Cruz whiffed on a sliding catch for an RBI double and second baseman Nick Gonzales made an ill-advised throw home – wide, to boot – to set up two more runs.
So, Skenes was hardly bad – he struck out four in four innings – but a pair of walks pushed his pitch count to 78. Control has been a bugaboo for Skenes this year – he has 29 walks in 106 innings, nearly equaling the 29 in 133 innings his entire rookie season.
Again, not disastrous, and Misiorowski will undeniably experience similar ups and downs as his career gets off the ground. But he is still in the honeymoon phase and before a raucous crowd of 42,774 at American Family Field, continues to be a gift to Brewers fans.
‘So much fun. It was so electric. The fans here were so awesome,’ says Misiorowski in a postgame dugout interview. ‘You have the guys score four for me, I felt at ease a little more, it felt like, OK, I got this.
‘We can win this game.’
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