While You Sat in Awe of His Fastball, Jacob Misiorowski Broke Out a True Slider Monday

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

It was hard not to give all one's attention to Jacob Misiorowski's fastball on Monday. There's never been such an overpowering arm; he's bullying hitters with an utterly unprecedented heater. He threw 59 pitches with a perceived velocity (the raw velocity, plus an adjustment for his elite extension, releasing the ball about 12% of the way from the pitcher's mound to home plate) of 102 miles per hour or more in the game, sliding him into third place all-time in such pitches. He's only one behind Jordan Hicks for second—all this in less than a year in the majors.

Amid his 7 dazzling innings of two-hit, one-run, 12-strikeout ball, though, Misiorowski did something else worth noting on Monday: he mixed in a true slider. His breaking stuff stretched across an unusually continuous spectrum of speed and movement, becoming impossible to contend with for Cardinals batters just trying to cope with 103 miles per hour.

Over the winter, our Jack Stern wrote about the fact that Misiorowski's pitch often labeled a slider is really a cutter. It's often come in at more than 95 MPH, and it hasn't had the depth of movement—in particular, the separation of movement from the fastball—of a true slider. In several key respects, the pitch is much more like a cutter than a slider.

That was true last year, and it's remained true for most of this season. Here's what his movement plot for his antepenultimate start against the Padres looked like.

There's actually more separation in movement between the fastball and the so-called slider than between the slider and the curveball, in this image, which invites you to think of the in-between pitch as a slider. In truth, though, that's only because his curveball is such a tight, power pitch. Most of those mustard-yellow pitches in the center of the plot are pretty clearly cutters, especially when you factor in the mid-90s velocity. However, the distribution there did preview something, as we'll soon see.

Here's the same plot for his start against the Cubs last week. As you can see, the distribution of that "slider" is much smaller; it was unequivocally a hard cutter that night at Wrigley Field.

Now, though, compare each of the above images to this one, showing the movement of his stuff on Monday at Uecker Field.

At a certain point, Statcast's spirit breaks, and it gives up a little bit. Is a pitch that comes in at almost exactly 90 miles per hour, but with more depth than any slider you've seen lately, really a curveball? It's hard to say. The computers aren't designed to deal with anything quite this freakish. It tagged a couple of pitches that might have been extremely high-powered curves as sliders; it tagged a couple of could-be sliders as turbo curves.

Either way, though, look at how wide and uniform the distribution of his breaking balls' movement was. Indeed, there's a blend from curveball to slider, but none of what you'd readily call a cutter, as there was even one start ago.

Pitch-tagging trouble could be introducing distortions, but it sure looks like Misiorowski threw the slowest average sliders of his season Monday—rivaled only by that game against the Padres earlier this month.

When two pitches' velocity is up and one is down in a given outing, it signals some kind of intentional change. So does the fact that Misiorowski's slider had a higher spin rate than usual on Monday, despite the lower velocity. (Those two numbers are usually strongly correlated, and his curveball's average spin rate is lower than his slider's, so the higher spin rate on the slider suggests that few or none of them were mistagged curves.) Misiorowski has also never had so much vertical depth on his slider:

Or so much glove-side movement:

There really seems to be a new pitch in the mix, here. It's likely that Misiorowski is still throwing that hard cutter some of the time, but he now seems to have a feel for a slider that fits between the cutter and his curveball in terms of both movement and velocity. That's just unfair, but it's true.

This new pitch didn't actually miss any bats for Misiorowski on Monday. However, he got multiple weak swings and feeble pieces of contact on it, leading to easy outs and upping his already impressive efficiency. If this turns out to be a durable new dimension to his game, watch out. Already, in his last six starts, he's allowed zero extra-base hits. If this change locks in for him, a no-hitter is right around the corner.

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[igor67]

12Ks less than 100 pitches and 7 innings is super impressive. As you said if he can start mixing in more weak contact quick outs and complete game no hitter is not out of the question.

[Jake McKibbin]

 

Not sure if I've nailed it 100%, but you can see roughly 4 mph of velo difference between the cutter and slider, and six inches or so more downward break

[Matthew Trueblood]

6 minutes ago, Jake McKibbin said:

 

Not sure if I've nailed it 100%, but you can see roughly 4 mph of velo difference between the cutter and slider, and six inches or so more downward break

Great work. Close enough to right, at the very least. What a beast this guy is, if it's now essentially two different breaking balls and two different heaters.

[Team Canada]

Remember when we thought Skenes was going to be the best pitcher in the NL for the foreseeable future?

[igor67]

I don't think anybody would have been surprised to see him be really good but struggle enough with command for a few years. Getting that walk rate under 3 per 9 innings to me is just as impressive as the ability to keep pumping 100+ MPH pitches. There is no question his ability to throw that hard for that long into games is unique. I just wish we had enough data going back to Nolan Ryan to see what the career record for total 100+ mph pitches thrown is (I assume he would own that title, but maybe Johnson would have it instead, I don't think Clemens hit 100 all that often)

[CheezWizHed]

On 5/26/2026 at 11:10 AM, igor67 said:

I don't think anybody would have been surprised to see him be really good but struggle enough with command for a few years. Getting that walk rate under 3 per 9 innings to me is just as impressive as the ability to keep pumping 100+ MPH pitches. There is no question his ability to throw that hard for that long into games is unique. I just wish we had enough data going back to Nolan Ryan to see what the career record for total 100+ mph pitches thrown is (I assume he would own that title, but maybe Johnson would have it instead, I don't think Clemens hit 100 all that often)

The thing to remember with the Ryan/Johnson era of radar guns is that they changed where they measure the pitch velocity in 2017.  Ryan's FBs were measured near the plate while Miz's FBs are measured closer to the mound.  That gives modern FBs a +2 or 3 MPH to the previous era.  

I would guess Ryan throwing today in his prime would be neck and neck with Miz. 

[BrewerFan]

4 hours ago, CheezWizHed said:

The thing to remember with the Ryan/Johnson era of radar guns is that they changed where they measure the pitch velocity in 2017.  Ryan's FBs were measured near the plate while Miz's FBs are measured closer to the mound.  That gives modern FBs a +2 or 3 MPH to the previous era.  

I would guess Ryan throwing today in his prime would be neck and neck with Miz. 

Yeah...same with Clemens. He clocked at 101... but also pitched under a different philosophy. You'd rather throw(using Mis) 96-97 and go 9IP and throw 125 pitches and pace yourself vs throwing it 101 47 times in a game and striking out as many as possible. 

 

I don't know how Ryan or Clemens compares. I've seen the same as you, but i don't know how accurate that radar gun was. we all know the big unit or Nolan were two of the greatest power pitchers in MLB history. 

It's just... amazing to see a guy who can do the things he can, and as a fan, it's maybe even more impressive to watch a teammate of his one-up him... at least in terms of just runs allowed and pure production! 

Also, hilarious to watch Red Sox fans on X. "If one more Brewers fan thanks me for Kyle Harrison...." 

Which... of course, at that point, it felt rude not to. I assumed, he meant if one more thanks me, I'll then appreciate the depth of their gratitude! 

[BrewerFan]

On 5/26/2026 at 11:10 AM, igor67 said:

I don't think anybody would have been surprised to see him be really good but struggle enough with command for a few years. Getting that walk rate under 3 per 9 innings to me is just as impressive as the ability to keep pumping 100+ MPH pitches. There is no question his ability to throw that hard for that long into games is unique. I just wish we had enough data going back to Nolan Ryan to see what the career record for total 100+ mph pitches thrown is (I assume he would own that title, but maybe Johnson would have it instead, I don't think Clemens hit 100 all that often)

No, I was kinda thinking it'd take a couple years until he really clicked. That it'd be similar to young Sheets. Stretches of really throwing well and then he'd struggle. If nothing else, have those blowup starts. 

Now, he's a potential Cy Young winner. 

You see comps lke deGrom and... SO rarely does it actually turn out to be a viable comp. Even better arguably as Mis is still refining his secondary pitches because... people just cannot hit that Fastball, but as you see from last night, he can throw 70%+ of Fastballs and just hit a quadrant and he is NASTY. 

If he can throw that CB at 85 and get more of a gap between the off-speed(maybe not the Slider/cutter which is apparently what the "slider" with elite movement is) but the other two. 

Would LOVE to see the Brewers pony up and sign him now and keep him 8 years. Or 8 more. But I think that's 8/140 at this point. 

[CheezWizHed]

16 hours ago, BrewerFan said:

Yeah...same with Clemens. He clocked at 101... but also pitched under a different philosophy. You'd rather throw(using Mis) 96-97 and go 9IP and throw 125 pitches and pace yourself vs throwing it 101 47 times in a game and striking out as many as possible. 

 

I don't know how Ryan or Clemens compares. I've seen the same as you, but i don't know how accurate that radar gun was. we all know the big unit or Nolan were two of the greatest power pitchers in MLB history. 

It's just... amazing to see a guy who can do the things he can, and as a fan, it's maybe even more impressive to watch a teammate of his one-up him... at least in terms of just runs allowed and pure production! 

Also, hilarious to watch Red Sox fans on X. "If one more Brewers fan thanks me for Kyle Harrison...." 

Which... of course, at that point, it felt rude not to. I assumed, he meant if one more thanks me, I'll then appreciate the depth of their gratitude! 

Nolan Ryan was just a special dude.  He pitched 26 consecutive years (plus one brief cup of coffee when he was 19 years old) in an era where pitchers were out there for 200-300 innings.  At 44 years old, he put up 5.2 WAR and was still exceeding 100MPH on the radar gun.  In 1973, he had 383 Ks in 326 IP (a modern-day K/season record).  He had one season at 89 IP; after that his lowest was 131 IP. In his 26 full seasons, he averaged 207 IP per season.

Like you said, pitchers have a higher K/IP rate these days, but could you imagine someone putting in 300 IP in a season today?  Or Ryan pitching "only" 6 innings/game? 

I was never a specific fan of the guy, but you have to marvel at what he was able to do over such a long period of time.