Misiorowski Is More Than Enough
And still maybe not as much as possible!
You know—unless you’re Misiorowski—I don’t care how hard you throw, if you throw it in the center of the plate guys are going to make a good pass on it.
— John Kruk the other day
Based on recent history, the chances are around 50-50 that on Friday Jacob Misiorowski is going to throw the fastest pitch ever thrown by a starting pitcher. He first broke that record in his April 25 start (102.7 mph), then topped his own records on May 1 (103.0), May 8 (103.6), June 6 (103.7) and June 12 (104.5)—five new records1 in a span of nine starts.
Don’t just turn on the game at random if you want to see it. Since May 1, when Misiorowski made the leap from really good to literally the most dominant pitcher of all-time, his starts have followed a predictable pattern. He begins the first couple innings throwing almost nothing but fastballs. With those long limbs, extreme extension, and history of scattered wildness, you get the sense that his early-game project is just to calibrate himself, by keeping things very simple: One grip, one release point, one line, until he’s sure he’s not wild that day.
Spamming fastballs to the top of the order can be risky, though. So he throws his very best fastballs. That’s when you see the 103s and 104s.
And then, a couple innings in, he starts bringing in other pitches, at which point the fastball backs off a bit. It’s as though he’s more cautious with it once the cognitive task of pitching—toggling between grips and arm angles and locations—gets more challenging. So the fastball starts games at max, then drops a bit, and he holds it there:
But late in games he often synthesizes: He uses all his pitches and the velo starts ticking back up2. This suggests the 103s were always there if he wanted them, but he’d chosen restraint. Of the 30 hardest fastballs he’s thrown this year, 27 came in the first 25 pitches of the game. The three exceptions were pitches 92, 93 and 94 of their respective games.
From roughly pitch 26 through roughly pitch 90, the hitters get a little bit of a break.
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It’s not nearly the respite you might expect. Depending on how you measure it, Misiorowski is either barely worse when his velo drops during the middle innings, or he’s not worse at all.
Here, for example, are his stats based on times through the order, since May 1:
First time through: .088/.139/.088
Second time through: .130/.167/.159
Third time through: .095/.174/.095
The lowest OPS any pitcher has ever allowed—minimum 50 innings—was Craig Kimbrel’s .126/.186/.172 in 2012, and Misiorowski has been better than that in his relatively weaker second and third trips through.
By Statcast’s Run Values, which give credit for balls and strikes instead of just outcomes, there’s even less of a drop from the first time through to the next:
First time through: 4.0 Runs/100 pitches
Second and third time through: 3.9 Runs/100
If Misiorowski’s fastball is what makes him so special, then why doesn’t taking 2 mph off his fastball affect hitters’ chances?
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Part of it is surely that batters have to worry about more pitch types the second and third times through. (Since May 1, he’s about 80 percent fastballs in the first inning, 70 percent in the second, and 60 percent after that.) But I think the more important answer is that Misiorowski’s fastest fastballs are faster than they need to be. Beyond a certain point, a batter is simply beat. If a pitcher threw, say, 400 mph, it wouldn’t really matter whether he dropped to 398. I think Misiorowski has reached that point, and that point is around 101.
“But other people have thrown 101,” you say, “and they still give up hits.” But Misiorowski’s fastball, even at the relatively lower speeds, consistently outperforms its velocity.
When he throws 104, he’s unique. When he drops down to 102, there are other pitchers throwing as hard as him. But his 102 is more dominating than others’ 102. His 101 is more dominating than others’ 101. His 99 is more dominating than others’ 993. Mostly this is because, besides being large, he dives toward the plate for maximum extension:
Only three pitchers in the PITCHf/x era have even gotten more extension than Misiorowski does, and two of those guys—Carter Capps and Jordan Walden—were doing that freaky jump-drag delivery that you might remember hating. His fastest pitch was 104.5 mph, but he has thrown 138 pitches with a perceived velocity of at least 104.5. (His fastest perceived velocity was 107.5.)
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Another way of appreciating that Misiorowski throws harder than is strictly necessary is by seeing what happens when he throws a meatball. A good pitch is a combination of stuff and location. If you set the location bar to zero, then the stuff bar has to be maxed out to merely survive.
Since May 1, Misiorowski has thrown 46 middle-middle fastballs. Of those 46:
40 strikes (15 taken, 15 fouled, 10 whiffs)
4 outs in play
2 singles
One of those singles was, perhaps, the exception to prove the rule. It came on the slowest Mis fastball of them all, a mere 98 mph. When Misiorowski lets his fastball drop to 98, he does start to get hittable. But 98 is way down the list for him.
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Something I’ve been thinking about for a long time is: In the NBA, there are guys who shoot 60 percent from the free throw line and guys who shoot 90 percent from the free throw line, with a relatively normal distribution between those points. It’s a controlled shot. Some people have a lot of control, some people don’t.
You’d say the same about pitchers: Some pitchers have a lot of control and some pitchers don’t. But the distribution of strike rates among pitchers is way, way narrower than it is for NBA free throw shooters. Last year, among 110 qualifying pitchers, all but one were between 61 percent strikes and 68 percent strikes4. That’s pretty insane to me. Some guys are super wild and some are super commandy, and yet across 100 pitches all of them (except one) fall within a seven-strike range. Where are the 80 percent strike throwers? Why have we never had an 80 percent strike thrower?
Some part of it is that pitchers are afraid to throw too many strikes. They’re incentivized to pitch carefully, to avoid the middle of the zone, to avoid the zone entirely with certain pitches and in certain counts. The reason there are no 80 percent strike throwers is that every pitcher is either too wild or too scared.
The one qualifying pitcher last year who was not between 61 and 68 percent was Tarik Skubal, who was at 70 percent, a bona fide outlier. Last August, Dallas Braden recounted a conversation he’d had with Skubal:
“The point Skubal made was, I know what my stuff looks like, I know how it plays. It’s 100 mph. Good luck. He understands the margin for error that comes along with his stuff, so why would he be out there doing anything other than try to attack the strike zone?”
Jacob Misiorowski was really good before May 1. Since then he has thrown harder, and he’s thrown more strikes, and those strikes have moved closer to the center of the strike zone5, and now he’s the best pitcher we’ve ever seen over a six-week stretch. When you’re watching him on Friday, you can also appreciate it when he mixes in a nasty slider or paints the inside corner And you can fantasize about what he might still do in the future, like add a sinker6. But at this point, it’s not clear he needs to do anything but throw four-seam fastballs for strikes and smile when he’s walking off the mound.
I’ve excluded the time Jordan Hicks hit 103.2 as an opener, which feels like a justifiable exclusion; and the time Justin Verlander hit 103.1 in a postseason game, which feels a bit less justifiable. Cherry-picking and then berating myself for it in the footnotes is the compromise I make.
He throws harder in innings 7/8/9 than any other innings except 1 and 2.
The effect starts to break down once he drops to 98. Further study is needed as to what other factors are involved when he drops to 98, what other situational or physical abnormalities might be involved, but those pitches from him do get hit a bit.
Okay, all but one were between 60.9 percent and 68.0 percent. I cheated again to make it look cleaner.
Before May 1 his average pitch was 13.2 inches from the center of the zone. Since May 1, it’s 12.2 inches from the center of the zone.
In his great Pitcher Notes newsletter, Lance Brozdowski wrote, of Misiorowski’s potential to add a sinker: “I think my favorite pitchers are those who dominate but have clear lanes to take in order to get better.” It’s wild to think that Misiorowski might not just have ways to improve further, but clear ways!
This reminds me of a pitching coordinator with the Rays. He told coaches that if a pitcher nibbles, it’s often because we haven’t helped them develop the weapons to pitch in the strike zone.
I understand that his size and stuff makes him a bigger and better version of him, but I’m getting DeGrom vibes from Miz. It’s a level above that in some ways, but there’s an inevitability to him being on the mound that I felt with peak DeGrom.