Jacob Misiorowski has turned this season into a showcase unlike anything baseball has seen in a long time.
The 24-year-old isn’t just overpowering hitters with triple-digit heat. He’s stacking up numbers that put him in the company of some of the most dominant pitchers ever, and in several categories he’s already in record territory.
Start with the fastball, because that’s where the awe begins. Misiorowski enters Sunday with 1,053 pitches at 100 mph or harder this season, the most by any pitcher in a single year since pitch tracking began in 2008.
That number dwarfs the previous high of 673, set by Jordan Hicks in 2018. It also leaves the rest of the sport far behind; the Padres are next this year with 688 entering Saturday.
The strikeout numbers are just as wild. Before this season, the fastest strikeout by a starting pitcher under pitch tracking was 102.6 mph, thrown by Tarik Skubal on May 25, 2025.
Misiorowski has now claimed every one of the top 41 spots on that list. Seven of those strikeouts came on pitches of 104 mph or more.
That kind of power is almost unheard of even among relievers - only six other pitchers have recorded a 104+ mph strikeout under tracking, and all of them did it out of the bullpen: Aroldis Chapman, Mason Miller, Ben Joyce, Jhoan Duran, Hicks and Mauricio Cabrera.
He’s also piled up single-game marks that barely sound real. On June 26, he threw a 105.5 mph pitch, the fastest by a starter and tied for the third-fastest by anyone under tracking.
He set records for the most 100-plus mph pitches in a game with 66 on July 26, along with the most 101+ pitches (63), 102+ pitches (54) and 103+ pitches (33). On June 12, he also logged a game with 12 strikeouts on 100+ mph pitches, three more than anyone else has ever had in a tracked game.
And it isn’t only about radar-gun readings. Misiorowski leads MLB in strikeouts with 243, ERA at 1.89 and opponents' batting average at .160.
Since 1950, only three pitchers have finished a season leading the majors in all three categories, according to the Elias Sports Bureau: Mike Scott in 1986, J.R. Richard in 1976 and Sandy Koufax in 1965.
That .160 average allowed stands out on its own. It would be the lowest by a pitcher in a qualified season, excluding significantly shortened years, and would beat Pedro Martínez’s .167 from 2000.
Even when the offensive environment is taken into account, Misiorowski still looks absurd. The league is hitting .244 this year, and by AVG+ he sits at 66, meaning opponents have hit 34% better than league average against him.
That would tie Nolan Ryan’s 1991 mark for second-best, behind only Martínez’s 61 in 2000.
His WHIP tells the same story. Misiorowski leads all qualified pitchers at 0.81, a figure that would place him fourth on the all-time list for qualified pitchers in the Live Ball Era, behind Martínez’s 0.74 in 2000, Verlander’s 0.80 in 2019 and Greg Maddux’s 0.81 in 1995. The next names after that are Verlander at 0.83 in 2022 and Dave McNally at 0.84 in 1968.
Age only makes the season look more outrageous. Misiorowski will be 24 years and 177 days old next Sunday, the final day of the regular season.
If he finishes atop qualified pitchers in both ERA and strikeouts, he would be the third-youngest to do it since earned runs became an official stat in 1913. Only Dwight Gooden in 1985 and Hal Newhouser in 1945 were younger.
There’s another angle too: contact quality. Misiorowski has allowed just 24 extra-base hits while striking out 243 batters, which would be the fewest extra-base hits ever allowed by a pitcher with at least 240 strikeouts in a season.
The Cy Young conversation will wait until November, but Misiorowski has already built a serious case in only his second big league season. No pitcher has ever won the award in his debut year, but five second-year pitchers have taken it: 2025 Paul Skenes, 2008 Tim Lincecum, 1985 Bret Saberhagen, 1985 Gooden and 1981 Fernando Valenzuela, who was still technically a rookie. AL favorite Cam Schlittler is also in his second season, which means 2026 could join 1985 as a year with two second-year Cy Young winners.
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