Can the Rays Crack Jacob Misiorowski?
The way people talk about Jacob Misiorowski bothers me a little. Yeah, he’s taller than almost any other starting pitcher and throws harder than literally any starting pitcher in history. He led all major league pitchers in WAR this year, and if he wins the NL Cy Young Award next month — as he’s almost universally expected to do — it will be a deserved victory.
But Miz didn’t lap the field or post paradigm-altering results. I can’t make a defensible case for Chris Sale or Cristopher Sánchez to win the Cy Young over Misiorowski, but I suspect the eventual vote total will not reflect how close the statistical margin was between Miz and his rivals.
In other words, this is an outstanding pitcher — maybe the best in the world at the moment, perhaps even a future Hall of Famer — but he’s not 1999 Pedro Martínez, or Victor Wembanyama with a curveball. This is a fairly inexperienced 24-year-old with real flaws in his game.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
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The comment so inane, he had to post it again
Nice analysis.
He’s thrown 196 innings this year, including the post season. Last year he threw 129.1 and in 2024 and 2025 combined only 134.2. I’m not surprised his stuff is down. I’d be more surprised if it wasn’t.
I remember last year against the Cubs in Game 1 of their postseason series he came out jacked up and throwing 104 with no command. If the extended rest and now with some postseason experience enable him to throw 104 in the zone – he may very effective. I anticipate another early hook tomorrow and wonder how many total innings he pitches if it goes 7 games. 10?
So part of the swing length thing I think is just how frequently Miz works up in the zone — swings are simply shorter at the top of the zone (that’s physics).
My favorite thing about that table — Freddie Freeman. Everyone else is doing something different, Freddie Freeman just keeps being Frederick.
His stuff hasn’t been as stuffed in the playoffs. The question is why? Fatigue is the obvious answer, and I’m really curious whether an eleven-day reset does anything to get him back to his regular season form, or whether the cumulative toll of his innings total will mean a diminished-but-still-effective Miz.
ETA: He ascribes his velocity to his lower half and a lot of leg lifting. I wonder if there’s a lifting taper similar to what marathoners do before a race that can help boost him in the World Series.
2026 grammar: “He can be got at.”