Carrigg makes Rockies history with homer off Misiorowski fastball

MILWAUKEE – Somewhere within Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski’s record-setting barrage of fastballs Sunday afternoon, Rockies rookie Cole Carrigg believed there was a chance.

Misiorowski fanned the first seven batters, the most strikeouts the Rockies had ever endured to start a game. By Carrigg’s fifth-inning at-bat, Misiorowski had fanned 12 of the 14 batters he had faced, and no one had reached base.

Then Carrigg swung himself into the velocity trivia books. His opposite-field line shot on a 101.9 mph pitch – the fastest that resulted in a home run by a Colorado player since the era of modern pitch tracking dawned in 2008 – put the Rockies within sniffing distance, and Misiorowski was not in the game much longer.

But neither were the Rockies, who dropped an 11-2 decision and lost two of three at American Family Field.

“Honestly, we were scratching, clawing, trying to get to him in any way, shape or form,” said Carrigg, who is hitting .287 with five home runs since his June 9 promotion from Triple-A Albuquerque. “Obviously, he throws real hard – great pitcher – but personally I was just trying to be as short as I could, trying to get something over the plate.”

The homer cut the Milwaukee lead to 3-1, and Misiorowski was done at the end of that fifth. He’d put in quite a day’s work not previously seen in the pitch-tracing era:

• Misiorowski’s 66 pitches that reached triple digits smashed his own single-game record of 58 on June 12. He owns the top seven such games, with the seventh being 52 against the Rockies at Coors Field on June 6.
• Increasing the mph threshold, his 63 pitches 101 mph and above also set the standard.
• Want to go higher? Eight of his strikeouts were on pitches 103 mph or faster, beating his own record of six in the aforementioned matchup with the Rockies.

“That’s a one-of-one fastball, 103 with all that extension,” Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer said of Misiorowski, who is listed at 6-foot-7. “It’s hard to react to that. And he throws it all the time.”

Rockies starter Kyle Freeland was in no mood to praise – “I’m not talking about Jacob Misiorowski right now,” he said – after he once again came close to a good outing but fell short for a third straight time.

Freeland, who is in his 10th season with the Rockies but also is being mentioned in trade rumors ahead of the Aug. 3, 4 p.m. MT Deadline, gave up three first-inning runs, but held the Brewers scoreless until Andrew Vaughn’s leadoff homer in the sixth. In each of his last three starts, he yielded a sixth-inning homer to cost himself a quality start.

For Freeland, it goes back to the beginning.

“I haven’t had a very good ERA in the first inning the entire year, and I’m trying different ways to go about it,” said Freeland, who yielded five runs on six hits in 5 1/3 innings.

Instead of the beginning of a comeback, Carrigg’s homer off Misierowski was rendered a piece of home run pitch-velocity trivia.

“It’s pretty cool,” Carrigg said. “I figure it’s pretty up there with a guy like that. It doesn’t mean much to me, though.”