Climbed the Ladder: Jacob Misiorowski Wins 2026 National League Cy Young Award

Before we had hard-and-fast measurements of velocity or movement (let alone spin rate, extension or vertical approach angle), when a pitcher was really, really on, they would say he had an extra yard on his fastball. Lindsey Nelson, Ralph Kiner and Bob Murphy used to talk about it while calling Tom Seaver's best games. Vin Scully referred to it when describing Sandy Koufax. It wasn't just a hard fastball. These were the heaters that would jump over the bat, leaving the batter wondering either why they had swung or by what magic they might ever hit it, even if it was right down the middle—but especially when it was chest-high, which it always seemed to be. 

We know better now. Jacob Misiorowski's fastball doesn't have an extra yard on it; it has two. That makes it, literally, unfathomable—and until he started doing what he started doing this spring, that's exactly what his campaign of high heat was, even to those who had seen the best of Aroldis Chapman and Randy Johnson. Misiorowski isn't The Unicorn—that's Shohei Ohtani, even if Misiorowski helped the Brewers slay the beast with a sweep of the Dodgers in the NLCS. He might just be baseball's centaur, though: a myth cantering right into reality, on legs that look like they belong to some creature other than itself. He'll have to wait for any official recognition of folktale status, but on Wednesday, he received affirmation of what everyone already knew: he was the best pitcher in the world in 2026.

The only two pitchers in the pitch-tracking era who have induced whiffs on a higher percentage of their four-seam fastballs than Misiorowski (40.2%) did in 2026 were relievers: Aroldis Chapman in 2014 and 2015, and Chad Green in 2017. Counting the postseason, he reared back and flung that fastball 1,904 times, and only surrendered eight home runs. If that had been all he did well, it might have been enough. They say big-league hitters can time a speeding bullet, if they know it's coming, but they hardly ever caught up to Misiorowski's heat.

For good measure, he got more comfortable differentiating his slider and cutter from one another. When his mechanics got out of sync and he faced the threat of a lapse in control, the cutter allowed him to get back on track. When hitters were sitting on the fastball but he had them in swing mode, his curveball got the whiffs he needed. 

He was slightly less dominant in October, but no less effective. The league didn't figure him out or catch up to him; that was the most terrifying and exhilarating thing. Misiorowski's campaign will go down in history, as much for the sensation of watching him—of seeing a pitcher dominate more thoroughly and more simply over a full workload than anyone in recent memory—as for the stats he put up, but the stats were excellent, too.

Under the pre-arbitration bonus pool, Misiorowski receives a $2.5-million bonus to go with the award. More importantly, this is the final validation of his brilliance for this year. The Brewers will simply hope he can return to this level in 2027. Surely, there's no level left to which he could climb from here. Right?

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