Velocity drop can't stop Misiorowski from yet another quality start

NEW YORK – The upside for Jacob Misiorowski of standing 6-foot-7 is that he has the leverage it takes to fire triple-digit fastballs. But sometimes there is a downside to those long levers.

It’s evident on nights like Thursday, when the 23-year-old Brewers right-hander and NL Cy Young Award frontrunner had some trouble with another pitcher’s mound on the road, and he slipped and slid for six innings of a quality start in Milwaukee’s 8-2 win over the Mets at Citi Field.

Misiorowski made it work. He delivered his 17th quality start and emerged with his MLB-leading ERA at 1.73 after holding the Mets to two runs on two hits, backed by a Brewers offense which scored twice in each of the first two innings for a four-run lead before Misiorowski had faced his fourth hitter. The bats were led by Jackson Chourio’s four hits, four runs scored and four RBIs, including a two-run homer in the second and another two-run homer in the eighth.

For Misiorowski, it wasn’t just the damp conditions on a grey day that saw batting practice washed out by rain. The larger problem for the flamethrowing righty is that he’s so, well, large, and thus lands farther down the mound than almost every other pitcher in the game. So instead of finding sturdy clay when his plant leg touches down, Misiorowski sometimes finds mush, and his fastball velocity creeps downward once that part of the mound begins to deteriorate.

When that began to happen in the early innings on Thursday, Misiorowski asked for assistance from the Citi Field grounds crew before throwing his first pitch in the fourth. Despite slightly diminished zip on his four-seam fastball, he retired the first seven hitters he faced before issuing his first walk in the third, and he’d faced the minimum with no hits allowed after combining with first baseman Andrew Vaughn and second baseman David Hamilton for a pin-balling groundout in the fourth.

But in the fifth, with his fastball down as low as 95.8 mph, Misiorowski found trouble for the first time. He walked Luis Robert Jr. to lead off the inning before falling into a 2-0 count against Jacob Young and grooving a cutter. Young lined it to right-center field for the Mets’ first hit, a run-scoring double.

Three batters later, Christopher Morel singled home another run and the Brewers lost a challenge at home plate, making it a 5-2 game.