BREAKING: Brewers to Call Up Jacob Misiorowski to Start Thursday Against Cardinals

The Milwaukee Brewers are putting their best foot forward, by putting their best arm forward. Despite a veteran-laden starting rotation and amid a solid recent run, they'll call up right-handed pitcher Jacob Misiorowski—the top pitching prospect in the organization—to start Thursday's series opener against the Cardinals, a source with knowledge of their plans said Tuesday afternoon. That confirms a report from Jeff Passan that broke minutes earlier.

Misiorowski has turned a corner with Triple-A Nashville over the last month and a half. He's touched as high as 103 miles per hour, even late in starts, and his command has improved markedly. The Brewers' starting rotation has been stretched very thin by injuries at times this season, but they do have arms available who could have made Thursday's start instead. This is a proactive choice by the team to promote a player with a chance to become one of the game's most electrifying arms.

Since the likely date for meeting Super Two eligibility thresholds in 2027 is now past, the Brewers could call up Misiorowski without any constraints or considerations other than his recent performance and the state of their pitching staff. As their corps of arms and their approach to using them has evolved throughout the season, they've achieved a level of comfort that they can accommodate the occasional short start (thanks especially to having long men Aaron Ashby and DL Hall available in relief) that permits this promotion without any lingering worry about its ramifications for the rest of the roster. On good days, it won't matter, anyway. Misiorowski has some of baseball's nastiest stuff.

After struggling to establish a third pitch or sufficient control over his two previous seasons as an emerging phenom, Misiorowski, 23, is having his best professional campaign. He's fanned 31.6% of opposing batters in 13 appearances for Nashville, and in addition to his wicked combination of a triple-digit fastball and a big-breaking, sharp curveball, he's established a cutter/slider and a changeup he can trust as ancillary weapons. The former has come along even more than that, in fact, not as an out pitch, but to set up and facilitate the rest of his game. It's all added up to a 2.13 ERA, against the best competition this continent can offer, short of the majors.

Sources said there was no immediate word on a corresponding move to clear space for Misiorowski on the active roster. One declined to rule out that an injury could be involved, but we'll wait to hear more on that in the coming days. Misiorowski is not yet on the 40-man roster, so a move will need to not only open a spot on the 26-man, but clear that slot on the team's reserve list. For now, it's time to look forward to what Misiorowski can do against big-league hitters. He had nothing left to prove in the minors, and the Brewers will need to press the pedal steadily toward the floor in order to get back to October this season. This move is a sure sign that they understand that.