Milwaukee Brewers rookie pitcher Jacob Misiorowski takes no prisoners — not even the defending MLB champion Los Angeles Dodgers. On Tuesday night, "Miz" wasn't just dominant against the Dodgers, he was historically good. According to Codify Baseball, he's the first pitcher to strike out 12 Dodgers hitters through five innings in the Statcast era, which started in 2015. That's 10 years worth of baseball, and a rookie just came in and sat down the best team in baseball like an ace.
Usually, these things are the other way around. The Dodgers have won over 100 games in three of the past four seasons (and 98 last year, in a World Series year) and have beaten the daylights out of teams for that whole time. I don't have anything against the Dodgers, but sometimes it's nice to see them look like the helpless team they've made others look like in season's past.
Brewers have a future ace in Jacob Misiorowski
Shohei Ohtani cranked a home run in the first at-bat of the game. After that moment, Misiorowski gave up just three hits, one walk and zero more runs in six innings of shutdown baseball. His opponent on the mound was Clayton Kershaw, who just passed 3000 career strikeouts. Kershaw had a great game too — only giving up two earned runs over six strong innings — but Milwaukee's new ace was just a bit better.
It's the first time he's reached double-digit strikeouts in his career, and I'm fairly confident it won't be his last. Misirowski has been on a virtual pitch count to start his career; he hasn't thrown over 100 pitches yet, and that makes sense. He was called up in the middle of a very long season, and the Brewers (53-40) hope for some playoff magic in 2025, and they don't want to wear out the prized arm of their top prospect in July.
His career is five starts old, and he already has a signature moment, one that included out-dueling a legend and shutting down a historically good offense in historically good fashion. Beast.