Jacob Misiorowski and Cam Schlittler are both staring at a piece of baseball history that hasn’t been touched in more than a century.
Since ERA became an official stat in 1913, no pitcher has finished a season with an ERA under 2.50 and at least 200 strikeouts after beginning that season with fewer than 75.0 career innings pitched. With less than a month left in the regular season, the Milwaukee Brewers’ Misiorowski and the New York Yankees’ Schlittler are both on track to pull it off.
Misiorowski has been the louder force so far. The 24-year-old right-hander, known as “The Miz,” turned in another sharp outing Tuesday, striking out nine and giving up one run on four hits over 6.1 innings in Milwaukee’s 4-3 win over the Chicago Cubs. He also added to a very specific kind of power pitching history, becoming the first pitcher to throw 1,000 pitches at 100 mph or harder in a single season since Statcast began tracking pitch data in 2008.
The numbers behind his season are eye-catching. Misiorowski leads the majors with a 1.95 ERA and has a 0.80 WHIP across 27 games. If he’s going to finish the job, he’ll have to keep suppressing runs while piling up enough strikeouts to reach the milestone.
Schlittler is right there with him. The 25-year-old Yankees right-hander worked seven innings of one-run ball against the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday, striking out 10 in New York’s 5-3 victory. He now sits second in the majors with a 2.01 ERA, trailing only Misiorowski, and has emerged as the apparent front-runner for the American League Cy Young Award.
Both pitchers are also doing this for teams positioned to play deep into September. The Yankees are 82-62 and hold the top American League Wild Card spot, while the Brewers became the first team to reach 90 wins this season at 90-56.
So the race isn’t just about numbers anymore. Misiorowski and Schlittler have a chance to put their names into a statistical club nobody has joined since before the dead-ball era ended, all while carrying their clubs toward October.
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Brandon Sproat's Brewers Audition Just Raised A Tough October Question
Brandon Sproat got another look in the majors and, for stretches, showed why the Brewers remain intrigued by him. The arm talent is obvious, and the strikeout upside still gives him a path into bigger innings down the line, but his latest relief outing also showed why the evaluation is not simple. A game that should have been a routine step in his return instead turned tense when his control wavered and his command slipped.
Four walks and a hit batter nearly put a Brewers win in jeopardy, and it only reinforced the question hovering over his immediate future. The club has been open about the fact that Sproat has real potential, but the next step is not about stuff so much as composure and the pitching process that comes with it. A return to Triple-A Nashville now looks likely, and Milwaukee will keep sorting out whether there is enough time for him to sharpen up before October decisions get serious. [Read more 🡒]