Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Throughout baseball history, there have been several bunt hit specialists. During the Dead Ball Era, guys like Wee Willie Keeler and Eddie Collins excelled at placing bunts and using their speed to reach base. Brett Butler had 42 bunt hits in 1992 alone. Juan Pierre totaled 201 in his career. I want to talk about the best bunter in baseball, but we need to start by making clear that we won't be besmirching the names of the best bunters in history by pretending that any of them are active now. The game has changed. To wit, David Hamilton is on pace for over 20 bunt hits in 2026, but that wouldn't even come especially close to the top spot for the last 20 years. That honor goes to Carlos Gómez, who—as a raw hitter and speed demon playing his home games on the artificial turf of the Metrodome—had a whopping 30 bunt hits in his first full season of 2008. However, since Gómez did that, no batter has collected more than 20. That new benchmark was set by Dee Strange-Gordon, in 2014. It's not a record, then, but Hamilton has a real chance to collect more hits via bunt than anyone has since CC Sabathia spent a summer in Milwaukee. The last time anyone bunted for a hit more than 20 times in a year, Pat Murphy was the head baseball coach at Arizona State University; Jesus Made was one year old; and Giannis Antetokounmpo had just picked up a basketball for the first time. No one is surprised that Hamilton is fast, of course. He's been one of the fastest people in professional baseball for his whole pro career, and he's exceptionally aggressive on the bases. However, it would have been hard to predict this level of impact from bunting when this season began. That required Hamilton to develop a real facility for the craft of the bunt, and for many a fast hitter in the game's history, that's proved easier said than done. Hamilton has it down, though—literally. He's become so adept at bunting the ball straight down that he often hits home plate or the hard-packed dirt directly in front of it. That's led to a handful of easy singles, because by the time the ball comes down from a 20-foot initial bounce, there's no time for a fielder to secure it and make a strong enough throw all the way to first base. R0JyenJfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdNRVVWQldWbGNBQVZ0VFZ3QUhBUTlYQUFNTVV3SUFCRk5XVmxjRUJGVlhCRmRR (1).mp4 Generally speaking, that's not a repeatable skill, but that's been Hamilton's genius. He has seven bunt hits with an official batted-ball distance of 0, 1 or 2 feet, and even that undersells him. Here's a ball on which he so niftily dropped the bat onto a dipping breaking ball that Statcast read the first bounce as upward flight off the bat, calling a ball he clipped straight into the dirt an 18-foot blooper. MnI0T1BfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUZKU0J3Y0NBd3NBQ1ZJS1Z3QUhVMVJXQUFOUVVRVUFVRkFHQlFwV0JsRUJBRk1G.mp4 That ability to move with a ball and almost lay the bat atop it has been marvelous to watch. Hamilton can also punch it a little, though, when he needs to get it away from an especially athletic catcher or the third baseman is cheating in but not close to the line. MTZORHJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQVFaV1ZsUlhVQW9BV2xwV1ZnQUhVZzlXQUFNQlVsSUFBZ0VIQUZZRENGVUFBRlFB.mp4 He also shows the capacity to get on top of high fastballs, which can often foil eager bunters with plenty of speed. Getting this down is almost the whole challenge, though getting out of the box well on such a high, hard one can also be tricky. a0R2WEJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFVQVVnQUhYbEVBQ1ZZSFhnQUhVdzhIQUFOWEJRQUFWMVJXVWdJSFYxQlVBd1FD.mp4 This skill hasn't turned Hamilton into a star or anything. He hits at the bottom of the Brewers lineup, and he's now in a de facto platoon with Joey Ortiz at third base. He's slugging .322 on the year. However, he's also getting on at a .313 clip, thanks to decent plate discipline, some shielding from tough lefties, and those bunts. Moreover, a bunt single (or a walk, or a plunking, or the time he reached on catcher interference, for which the scoring rules give the batter no credit) is often a double for Hamilton, who already has 16 stolen bases in 21 tries. His numbers won't be pretty. He won't be promoted to the top of the lineup. He won't even play every day. In all likelihood, the only chance Hamilton has for any national attention this year is if he collects enough bunt hits to claim the most since Gómez or Butler. But because he's used the bunt to augment his skills while he works to develop the Brewers' patented patient, let-it-travel approach, Hamilton has helped the team score at the excellent clip they've achieved this year, no matter what his stat line says. It's great to see him keeping the art form alive, and even leading its revival. It's also (aesthetically) good, old-fashioned fun when he lays one down and beats it out. The Brewers will take the fun, but it's the value he's finding ways to generate that has them happiest of all to keep penciling him in against right-handed opposing pitchers. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images It would be hubris—hideous hubris—to suggest that the NL Central race is over already. Sure, the season starts early these days, so even though it's only June 18, the Brewers have already played 71 of their 162 games. Sure, they have a comfy 5.5-game lead in the standings table, and the teams who looked most likely to give them a run for their money this year (the Pirates and the Cubs) are even further back. Much can happen in 100 days, though, and that's how much time is left in this long season. One year and one day ago, I wrote an article entitled "The Brewers Can Absolutely Catch the Cubs," and that turned out to be true. They were 5.5 games behind Chicago at the time. That said, though: this thing is pretty close to over. The 2026 Cardinals aren't the 2025 Brewers; those Brewers were better. The 2026 Brewers aren't the 2025 Cubs; these Brewers are better. Milwaukee is a well-run, deep, dynamic team that hasn't even had everything go right this year, and that is dominating, anyway. They're 104-58 in their last 162 regular-season games. They're going to win this division. Even the news that Quinn Priester won't be back this year (hardly news, by now, really) doesn't change that. Specifically, FanGraphs gives the Crew an 83% chance to win the NL Central, the highest point they've reached this year. The projection system there gives the Cardinals, Cubs and Pirates each about a 5% chance to catch Milwaukee, but if you have an 83% chance of winning something, you'd also rather have three rivals dividing the rest of the pie than see one more serious one lurking. There's little the Crew could do to press the pedal harder to the floor, anyway, but these data make it clear: they don't need to. They can afford, for instance, the slightly risky maneuver of designating Luis Rengifo for assignment to install Cooper Pratt at shortstop. They can afford not only to lose Priester, but to give Jacob Misiorowski extra rest between starts so he can still be fully operational come October. This team is living on Easy Street. That doesn't mean they should slow down, or that they shouldn't be proactive as the summer wears on. Whether it's another prospect promotion that encourages medium-term development as well as patching a hole on the roster, or making a trade before the deadline on August 3, the team should work hard to improve their chances. It's just that the chances they work hard to improve should be those of remaining a thriving Midwestern hegemon for many more years, and those of winning a World Series soon. If they make a major addition later this summer, it should be someone who materially bolsters their hopes of getting past the Dodgers this time, rather than a depth starter or fortifying secondary setup man. If they turn over Sal Frelick's job to Luis Lara or replace Brandon Sproat in the starting rotation, it should be because that serves the long-term development of the players they most believe are part of their future, not because it might help them win one or two more games before the end of September. Some teams build great farm systems and string together a few division titles, but find they can't get over the hump in October. Eventually, many of them decide to go 'all-in' and swap some future wins for the chance at present glory. The Brewers almost certainly won't do that, and they almost certainly shouldn't, either. However, they also shouldn't remain unduly conservative. The freedom allowed by a nice cushion in the division standings isn't the freedom not to act; it's the freedom to act with precision and patience. This is the golden era of Milwaukee Brewers baseball. It's never been better than this, and it might never be better than this again. But 'this' isn't confined to this summer. It's also about last year, and the one before, and the two or three or five to come. The Brewers' responsibility over the next six weeks is to show that they understand all of that—that they prove to the fans that they understand the hunger for a championship, without overdoing it and giving up the delirious joy of a team that wins the division almost every year. That sounds difficult, but if you're the Brewers, it's really not. What was difficult was building the best organization in the game, in terms of scouting, development, instruction and execution. After doing all that, risk management is just about rolling the dice and not counting the bounces. View full article

Love to hear that. Yeah, the fan culture on social media deflates me, too. It all seems to come from a place of tribalism, which blinds everyone who immerses themselves in it to good things done by any other team or player and to bad things done by anyone representing their tribe. We're trying hard to be the antidote to that: fun yet serious, critical but never cynical or rude. We won't always strike the perfect balance, either, but it's a lot easier to do that at sites like this than on Twitter or Bluesky or (God forbid) Facebook.

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images When Pat Murphy and the Brewers staff sits down to fill out the lineup card each day, they have a wealth of good options. Frustrating though it might be for fans to watch some of the weak hitters at the bottom of the order bat, Joey Ortiz, David Hamilton, Cooper Pratt and Blake Perkins each have considerable defensive and baserunning value. Ditto for Sal Frelick, when he's right. And even among their more offense-focused personnel, they have several good guys from whom to choose. Murphy has loved having such flexibility all season. Even during spring training, he was effusive about the improved depth of his team. It does make the choices on which they settle more interesting, though. For instance, against a starter without stark platoon splits—and with different approaches based on the handedness of the opposing batter—how do you choose between Jake Bauers and Andrew Vaughn at first base? Earlier this week, our Jack Stern wrote about the team's tendency to default to Bauers, even since Vaughn returned from the injured list at the beginning of May. Jack couched that daily dilemma largely in terms of the platoon advantage, and indeed, with right-handed starter Gavin Williams taking the ball for Cleveland on Wednesday night, it's Bauers starting over Vaughn. But there's a bit more to that decision, too. Firstly, Williams is one of an increasingly common breed of pitcher who essentiually workessentially from two distinct arsenals. Against righties, he leans heavily on a sinker and sweeper, moving east and west to find outs. Against lefties, he switches gears, going mostly with a four-seamer and a curveball and mixing in a cutter. Thus, when evaluating which hitters match up best against him, the Brewers almost have to ask which hitter they trust against the type of pitcher Williams is in those specific matchups—while baking in the demonstrated value of having at least a couple of same-handed batters in a lineup to force a pitcher to switch back and forth between approaches or pitch mixes. Because of the way the team's lineup works right now, this means assessing Vaughn, Bauers, Jackson Chourio, William Contreras and Frelick. In theory, the Brewers could sit any of them, or start all five, but mostly, Contreras's days at catcher and the imperative to use Christian Yelich when he's available will set up a short series of real dilemmas: Is Bauers or Vaughn better-suited to hit the opponent? If it's Bauers, should he go play the outfield for the night, at the expense of either Chourio or Frelick, making way for Vaughn? The Brewers gave us their answer when they issued the night's lineup card. Bauers is in there. So are Frelick, Garrett Mitchell and David Hamilton, over possible right-handed alternatives like Gary Sánchez and Joey Ortiz. Contreras and Chourio made the cut from the right side, but Vaughn didn't. The interesting question is: Why those guys? And now, we can furnish some answers to ourselves, using new Statcast data. Simply put, Vaughn struggles with the sinker-sweeper righty. That might be his toughest matchup. Looking at the distributions of his swing timing in all three dimensions against sinkers and sweepers from right-handed hurlers, you can see that Vaughn is often off the center of the barrel, often early or late, and unable to line up the barrel with the ball vertically as much as the average batter. This data is quite new, so I'm not expecting you to have contextualized the above already. Hopefully, though, you can see the difference between those distributions and these, for Chourio: Chourio can cover both pitches from a righty much better than Vaughn can. Even some of the times on which he's slightly off—early on the sweeper, for instance—result in hard contact in the air, because of his bat path and the way he adapts based on what he sees. Vaughn's best swing takes him through the ball on the inner third, and he struggles to connect cleanly if a pitch appears to be headed there and then ends up on the outer edge, instead. Chourio is much better at it. Starting Chourio over Vaughn, then, would be an easy choice, but that's not really the choice the Brewers faced. They first had to decide whether to give the nod to Vaughn or Bauers at first base, and that meant evaluating Bauers's ability to handle a righty who throws a four-seamer, a curveball and a cutter. The curve is awfully tough on Bauers, truth be told, but he's unexpectedly excellent at covering the four-seamer from a righty—especially up, His ability to line up the barrel with the ball vertically is far superior to that of the average batter, and with his elite bat speed, he's able to punish mistakes on either the cutter or the curve. In the past, we could have shrugged and said that a lefty is likely to hit a righty better than a righty is. Now, we can see clearly that Bauers is better able to stay on time and make solid contact against a pitcher like Williams than Vaughn is. The final option for the team would be to bench Frelick at Vaughn's expense, by moving Bauers out to right field. That's a decision they need to weigh a bit more seriously, unless and until Frelick shows more than he has of late either at bat or in the field. When it comes to hitting a righty like Williams, though, Frelick is much better equipped to make solid contact than is Vaughn. Frelick is superb at staying on time and finding the barrel against this suite of pitches, in this kind of matchup. His very low bat speed and tendency to let the ball get too deep on him are real concerns, but he's still much better against this type of pitcher than Vaughn is against the type of pitcher Williams is against righties. That's not to mention that a defensive configuration with Frelick in right field and Bauers at first is more robust than one with Vaughn at first and Bauers in right. Not all starting pitchers pose such interesting problems. Not all teams have such an array of possibilities when building a lineup. Thankfully, though, we now have some insight into how the Brewers can choose between those options on a fascinating night like Wednesday. Vaughn doesn't belong in the lineup initially, but that doesn't mean there won't be a pitcher later in the game against whom he's the right bat. And the Brewers are armed with terrific data to tell when and whether that moment comes. View full article

Image courtesy of © Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images The Cooper Pratt Era (such as it may be) will begin in earnest Tuesday night. The Brewers plan to start Pratt at shortstop for his major-league debut, and in making room for him on the active roster, they designated infielder Luis Rengifo for assignment. That it's Rengifo's place on the team Pratt is taking is no surprise, but it's of some interest that the veteran has been told to pack his bags, rather than being stashed away on the injured list. It looked as though Rengifo might have an injury worthy of a stint on the shelf, necessitating and facilitating Pratt's promotion. That would have kept the team's powder dry, holding onto Rengifo and keeping him in the mix with incumbent infield options Joey Ortiz, David Hamilton and Pratt, depending on how things develop from here. Instead, Rengifo is now effectively gone. That makes this move a bit more commital than it looked at first glance. Pratt is, effectively, taking over at shortstop, making (semi-)permanent the platoon of Ortiz and Hamilton at third base. This locks everything into place a little more than we might have anticipated. A roaring surge or a calamitous slump by either Ortiz or Hamilton could still change the equation. So could Jett Williams turning it on at Triple-A Nashville. Tentatively, though, it sure looks like the team plans to proceed from here with their freshly extended rookie at short and two players working in a complementary role next to him. There's a little risk here that wasn't there if and when one envisioned Rengifo landing on the injured list. It's not as easy, now, to foresee the team optioning either Ortiz or Hamilton if their performance demands it. The front office is gambling a bit, because this can no longer be an audition of a few weeks or a month. The Brewers need some mileage from Pratt, and their hopes for stabilizing the bottom end of the batting order now rest on the trio of Pratt, Ortiz and Hamilton. Rengifo could pass through waivers, given the money still owed to him, but it's unlikely that he'll have interest in going to Nashville. At this point, it seems like the Brewers can hope only to save a morsel of the money they still owe to Rengifo after signing him for $4 million over the winter. They're jettisoning him in the name of making the runway from which Pratt's career will take off as clear as possible. It was already exciting to see Pratt called up. Now, it's also intriguing, and a little bit risky. The upside for his team just rose considerably. Its floor might have dropped a bit, though. The club will hope the latter never comes into play. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jeffery Bennett-Imagn Images Robert Gasser was a two-fastball guy last year, who was really more like two different one-fastball guys. He leaned heavily on his four-seamer against right-handed batters, and on his sinker—really, a running two-seamer—against lefties. He only made two starts in the majors, but that's what he showed in them, and it roughly matched what he had shown in his rookie season of 2024, before going down with an elbow injury. He comes at you from a low slot, but he doesn't have anything with much depth. Instead, he's working east and west at all times, and his project within each at-bat is to set up and execute a sweeper to get you out. This season, much of that has changed. Gasser's slot is even lower in 2026 than it was in 2025. He's also using more of a crossfire delivery. In this pair of images, you can clearly see the lower arm angle, though the slight difference in camera angles makes it harder to tell that he's striding closed as he comes down the mound. Those adaptations give Gasser a clearer path to being a useful left-handed reliever, but interestingly, the changes he's made to his arsenal push in the opposite direction. He's now something much closer to a true three-fastball guy, who not only has a cutter he trusts again, but throws the four-seamer, the sinker, and the cutter to both lefties and righties. Ah, yes, and about that sinker: it's not a two-seamer that runs but doesn't sink much, anymore. Gasser acknowledged after his first big-league start of the year that he's made a grip change this year. He now throws what he calls a "one-seam" sinker, with more depth. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a one-seam grip places one of a ball's horseshoe-shaped laces between the fingers of a pitcher, letting one seam catch the air and create downward movement via air resistance, rather than spin direction or traditional seam-shifted wake. It's an unusual grip for a pitcher coming from a low slot like Gasser's, but the effect has been to give his sinker much more true sink. Despite the lower slot, Gasser's four-seamer has as much rising action as ever this year, but induced vertical break on the sinker is 6.8 inches, down from 9.6 inches in 2025. Unequivocally, this is a nastier pitch, and mixing it with the good changeup and sweeper Gasser has long had plus the two other fastball shapes should allow him to miss bats and collect weak contact, if the rest of the pieces fall into place. What are the rest of the pieces? In a word: location. Gasser has walked nine of the 87 batters he's faced this season, which is alarming, because control isn't even his biggest problem. Rather, it's that he's also allowed 11 extra-base hits. A handful of those came in Las Vegas, where the conditions weren't conducive to success for any pitcher, but he's been hit hard in each of his appearances so far. He's just making too many mistakes in the heart of the zone to dismiss any of the damage being done against him as a matter of bad luck. Though the tweaks to his sinker have given him a chance to hit better spots with it low in the zone, in practice, he's leaving it up too much—be that in the zone, when it was meant to be below it, or up up. RDFkOXlfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFrRkFBRUdBZ0lBRFFBRVVBQUhCVlFGQUZnTUFnQUFCd1JVQndkUkJnZFdBRk5U.mp4 Living mostly in the 91-93 MPH zone, Gasser doesn't have the margin for error to miss as much as he's been missing, with any of his pitches. He's built a more interesting arsenal than he had in the past, thanks in part to being healthy enough to get the reps in and do so. These were needed changes. To lock them in and enjoy the fruits of them, though, Gasser will have to keep drilling on the mechanics involved. He'll have to succeed at hitting his targets, because the stuff is now good enough to win—but it will never be good enough to make up for missing in the middle of the dish to big-leaguers. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images Let's get this much straight: Joey Ortiz still is not a good hitter. You don't want to see him anywhere but the bottom of your team's lineup card, and maybe not even there. In the last 30 days, he's batting .222/.364/.296, with four doubles and no home runs. He's only come to bat 67 times, as the Brewers have given David Hamilton a share of his time at shortstop and shielded him from right-handed pitchers much of the time. That's not a good offensive player. If you saw those numbers and made an intrigued, almost happy "huh" sound, it's only because you're so used to execrable production from Ortiz, who has been infamously inept at the plate for the majority of the last two years. Still, we have to reckon with his upturn in production a little bit, because we're likely to see the team reckon with the ramifications of a roster shakeup in the days ahead. Cooper Pratt will join the team Tuesday to make his big-league debut, and that will make him (for a spell, at least) one of the team's regulars. This isn't the kind of player whom you call up to moulder on the bench, even if it appears to have been a move prompted not by the proactive desire to install him permanently at shortstop, but by Luis Rengifo's apparent injury Sunday afternoon. Pratt's playing time can't all come from Rengifo's (presumably) surrendered share. Some of it will come from Ortiz's, and/or Hamilton's. So we need to be able to answer the question now: Is Joey Ortiz, in some important sense, fixed? Or is he the one who should be unceremoniously shunted out of the way to make room for Pratt? Let's dig in. Here's the most important fact about Ortiz getting better, as of about the middle of last month: it started with a concrete approach change. He has generally been a patient hitter (though, at times, a passive one, really), but he went to extremes of not swinging there, for a while. It worked, in that he started drawing walks at a healthy rate and getting on base much more often. But not swinging is not a long-term offensive strategy, especially for a player who doesn't strike any fear in the hearts of opposing pitchers. As you can see from that chart, though, Ortiz began swinging at a healthy rate again, on or about June 1, and his production didn't suddenly plunge back into the depths. So, let's talk about how he's changed in terms of his setup and movements. Here's Ortiz collecting a bloop hit against the White Sox on Opening Day. ek13WDVfWGw0TUFRPT1fQndoVVZWRUZBd29BQzFZRUFBQUhWVkpmQUZnQUJWTUFWRklEQ1FZRkIxVlZBd05l.mp4 The result was nice, but this isn't good process. This stiff, awkward, often lunging swing was Ortiz's norm throughout April, which is how he ended up running a sub-.400 OPS for a significant period. It wasn't working, so in the middle of May, the team and the player collaborated to try something new: a kind of factory reset. Here he is striking out against the Cardinals last month. bGJ3TlZfWGw0TUFRPT1fQndVRVhGWUNBd0lBQ0FNRVhnQUhVMWNEQUFOUkJRVUFBRklOVWdBQUNRcFFVZ2NE.mp4 This looks like a default setting, doesn't it? His feet are even. His hand position is neutral. Everything is very bland. It's no more effective than his previous stance and swing—in the particular cases I've selected, it was less effective—but it does take some of the tension and blockage out of his eyesight and movement. Making Ortiz get into this uncomfortably neutral position helped him reorganize his strike zone a bit, and it broke a few bad habits. Around the beginning of June, the slate cleared, Ortiz and the Brewers restored his preferences—but with a couple of important tweaks. Here he is truly hammering a ball, this weekend against the Phillies. b0d3S1hfWGw0TUFRPT1fVXdrRFhRVUJWZ1FBV1ZvQVZRQUhDVk5WQUZrQ1ZWVUFDMUJRQjFjTlZBVlVVUVlB.mp4 He got a little lucky here. He got a real meatball, right in his happy zone. The thing is, a couple of months ago, Ortiz didn't even have a happy zone at the plate. Although he's still no fearsome slugger, he's regained a sense of what he's looking for and what to do with it. What you can't spot for yourself in these videos, we can illustrate using some Statcast data on his stance and stride. Note that after the cleansing switch to standing straight and level, he's back to basically the same set of angles and the same stride direction now as he had in April—but with his weight a bit more forward. You can see this in the videos, too. His weight starts more even, and he's less coiled into his back hip—not in a way that costs him the power hitters get from their back side, but in a way that loosens his front hip and leg to move more fluidly. He's also moving his head a bit less, which leads to both better swing decisions and cleaner contact when he does swing. I'm not here to tell you the Brewers should trust Ortiz and return him to a full-time role. Some of the benefits and improvements we're talking about here are partially the product of having the platoon advantage more often than is typical. Some of them reflect the salutary discomfort of being less of a regular. When you get fewer reps, sometimes you swing less, and sometimes, that's exactly what needs to happen. Expanding a player's role after watching them improve when their role is reduced is often a mistake. I am here to tell you, though, that Ortiz has made some material changes, even if they seem subtle. He's putting himself in a position to succeed at the plate again, even if it be in a limited way. Given the value he provides on defense, that's all the team needed from him. If Rengifo is out a while and Pratt takes up residence at shortstop, don't be surprised if Ortiz becomes a productive member of a platoon at the hot corner—and, for the second time in three years, one half of the best defensive left side of the infield in the entire National League. View full article

No NTCs. Though I think you'd catch a LOT of heat for trading a player really soon after committing to players like that. Bad juju with agents you need to maintain relationships with. Bad relationships and reputation league-wide. These sound like small, soft things but the Brewers care about them. I would view these two as essentially off-limits in trade talks for the next 12-18 months, minimum.

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images It's easy to overhype a great prospect, or a player who has a tremendous rookie season. It's also easy to get jaded, and to dismiss the alleged greatness of something when the world seems to be juicing it up too much. Let's try to find a sweet spot in the middle together, shall we? Jacob Misiorowski will celebrate the one-year anniversary of his debut Friday by making his 32nd appearance in the big leagues, counting his three outings last October. He's still only pitched 156 innings at the game's highest level. However, he's already left an indelible imprint on his team, his adopted city and his sport. Let's talk about how. Here are the five best moments and performances of Misiorowski's young career. 1. Starting His Career with 11 No-Hit Innings Everyone knew Misiorowski's name even before he debuted. but this was not like the so-called Strasmas of June 2010, when Nationals phenom Stephen Strasburg took the bump for the parent club for the first time and mowed down 14 Pirates in seven innings. Strasburg had been the No. 1 pick in the MLB Draft just a year earlier. Misiorowski was a bit of a novelty item: a junior-college find by Brewers scouts who threw exceptionally hard but often didn't know where it was going. He'd turned a corner with his control in the minors, but would he have the command to dominate the best hitters on Earth? He immediately answered that question, with extreme prejudice. He only pitched five innings that first day against the Cardinals, with the crowd at Uecker Field roaring and thrumming with the electricity he put into the atmosphere, but he didn't give up a hit. He walked four and struck out five, before leaving after a bizarre ankle-wobble that was just enough to convince Pat Murphy to play it safe. That was a stunning debut, and immediately, the baseball world was abuzz with talk about The Miz. But what he did a week later turned the dial up to 11—literally. On a hot night in Minneapolis, with a Brewers-leaning Friday night crowd that was every bit as pitched toward excitement as the last one, Misiorowski fired another six no-hit innings against the Twins. In fact, this time, he was perfect through six frames: 18 batters faced, six strikeouts, zero baserunners. Murphy felt he'd earned a shot at the 7th, and the night ended quickly with a walk and a home run, but the story of the game was unchanged. Misiorowski wasn't just a good and unusual pitching prospect. He announced himself, immediately, as one of the best pitchers in the sport. 2. The All-Star Nod A huge kerfuffle erupted in the baseball world when Misiorowski was named to the National League All-Star team after making just five appearances in the majors. Given the scale of that internet scrap, one side or the other was going to have to look stupid at the end. It's the naysayers who sound like numbskulls, with the benefit of hindsight. It was certainly unusual to tack a player into the All-Star Game after so brief a stint in the bigs, but Misiorowski acquitted himself well on all fronts. He handled some tedious questions with his usual, affable shrug. He fired a scoreless inning in the game itself. It was the first instance in which he was asked to be the face of the league, in a sense, though not the last. He handled it well, on the field and off. 3. The Bounce, the Fist Pump, the Tide Change It's easy to forget this now—the Brewers' triumph feels almost inevitable, looking back on it—but Misiorowski was called upon in Game 2 of the NLDS at a precarious moment. The Brewers had blown the Cubs' doors off in Game 1, but it was 3-3 after two innings the next day. Chicago had gotten to Aaron Ashby, and Nick Mears was brought in only to bridge a gap and get out of the second. The series could easily have tipped in Chicago's favor. Instead, Misiorowski (with the help of the Brewers offense) shoved it the other way. He held Chicago scoreless over three innings, and the way he did it—twice topping 104 MPH in raw velocity, and with enormous intensity and passion—ended up turning the tide in Milwaukee's favor. He finished his first inning of work by running to the base to record the putout himself on a grounder he fielded, and then bounced off the field, roaring and pumping his fists. The crowd went berserk. Cubs fans (in a different way) went berserk. That was just the first of Misiorowski's innings, though. To go out after that display of catharsis and record two more strong frames showed his poise—the shark-eyed dominator that lies beneath the jubilant and sometimes disarming exterior. It's worth remarking and remembering, too, that the Brewers trusted Misiorowski with that assignment on purpose, even after he struggled to the finish line in the regular season. Some even speculated that he might not be on the Division Series roster. Seeing his makeup for what it is, as well as trusting the stuff, the Brewers leaned hard on him, instead. He got the win that night, and again in Game 5, when it was four innings of one-run ball. His charisma, as well as his incredible talent, was on full display. 4. Keeping a Little Bit of Pride Alas, the Brewers were not going to win the NLCS. Things needed to break their way, and they just didn't. Having worked at the end of the Cubs series, Misiorowski didn't take the mound again until Game 3 of the following series, on the road at Dodger Stadium. The Crew lost, but Misiorowski gave an even bigger audience—and a national media quick to dismiss the Brewers and crown the Dodgers as the cream of the crop for a second straight year—an eyeful of what the smallest market in the league can produce. He pitched five innings, giving up two runs on just three hits and a walk. He struck out nine, and left Shohei Ohtani so impressed (read: frustrated) that he gushed a bit about him to the Japanese press afterward. That moment made Misiorowski a global sensation. This spring, Japanese reporters showed up at Brewers camp to check in on the team, with special attention paid to Misiorowski. Step by step, over the first handful of months of a very young career, he blossomed from a second-round pick and a lottery ticket of a prospect into a full-fledged superstar. 5. The Streak As electrifying as Misiorowski was in 2025, however, he wasn't completely dominant. There were periods of real ineffectiveness, which is why he was in danger of not making the postseason roster (at least to outside eyes). There were a lot of walks. Entering 2026, it was fair to hope he might become the ace of the squad, but not quite reasonable to expect it. And then, very quickly, any doubt was swatted away, like a fly slowed down by too much nectar and buzzing too close to an ear. Misiorowski showed up in camp carrying more weight—good weight. He was only listed 4 pounds heavier in this year's Brewers media guide (201) than in last year's (197), and Brewers media relations ace Mike Vassallo takes great pride in the accuracy of his reported weights, but Misiorowski is simply thicker this year: thicker in the legs, thicker in the arms. He remains slender, but he's more physically mature. Injuries helped it happen, but very early in camp, it was clear he would be the Brewers' Opening Day starter. He asserted himself. Misiorowski struck out 11 in five innings on Opening Day and was similarly impressive the next time out, but early in the year, he consistently talked about feeling unable to open it all the way up—to throw as hard and as freely as he felt was possible—because of a mechanical issue in his lower half. It was easy to raise an eyebrow at this. No one throws as hard as Misiorowski. It was most likely that he himself couldn't throw any harder than he was. And then he did. After four starts early on in which he sat 98-99, Misiorowski's average heater has been at least 99.7 MPH in every outing since, culminating in averaging 101.3 last weekend in Colorado. That's just the actual velocity. His release extension has also ticked up over the same period. As a result, we've seen a pitcher against whom every hitter on Earth is essentially helpless. Aaron Judge got to try hitting this version of Misiorowski; he came away muttering about the best fastball he'd ever seen. Two pitches Misiorowski threw to Judge had a perceived velocity over 106 MPH, after adding the extension to sheer velocities over 103. With a keen sense of occasion, Misiorowski pitched against the Cardinals at home late last month and threw himself an early anniversary party. Once again, the Cardinals had no hits through the first five innings. This time, Misiorowski stuck around through seven, and he eventually gave up a run, but that was the first tally he'd surrendered in 30 innings of work. He's pitched twice more since, adding seven more frames each time, and the only run he's allowed in that span was unearned. In one sense—blending the utterly unprecedented velocity with the command he's found and a deeper arsenal, and considering the superb results—we're watching a legitimate candidate for the best pitcher in baseball history. There's no credible argument that anyone else is the best pitcher in the game at this moment, despite the brilliance of Cristopher Sánchez. Misiorowski is overpowering, cocksure, intelligent, and driven. Sixteen months ago, the pitcher he'll face Friday night—the Phillies' Andrew Painter—was a more famous name among prospect gurus. One year ago, he was a slightly skinny kid who didn't have his manager's full trust. Since then, he's made the fastest ascent toward baseball immortality this side of Mike Trout's historic rookie season—or, if you prefer to compare apples to pitchers, Strasmas. Merry Mis-mas, everyone. View full article