It's baseball's fastest bat vs. fastest arm in the World Series

The Brewers and Rays are coming out guns a-blazing for the World Series. It's fire vs. fire in Game 1 -- the fastest bat in the Majors against the fastest arm.

We're talking about Jacob Misiorowski vs. Junior Caminero. The Brewers' overpowering ace vs. the Rays' superstar slugger.

• World Series Presented by Capital One, Game 1, Friday, 8 p.m. ET on FOX/FOX Deportes/FOX One

Misiorowski throws harder than any starting pitcher in baseball. Caminero swings his bat faster than any hitter in baseball. It's a high-octane matchup worthy of the Fall Classic, and we get it right from the jump.

SP with highest avg. fastball velocity in 2026

1. Jacob Misiorowski: 100.6 mph
2-T. Hunter Greene: 98.3 mph
2-T. Bubba Chandler: 98.3 mph
4-T. Eury Pérez: 98.2 mph
4-T. Jared Jones: 98.2 mph

Hitters with highest avg. bat speed in 2026

1. Junior Caminero: 79.4 mph
2. Jordan Walker: 79.3 mph
3. Nick Kurtz: 78.2 mph
4. Cam Smith: 78.0 mph
5. Oneil Cruz: 77.7 mph

We love a good "best on best" showdown, and we're not going to get cheated in Game 1. Caminero always brings his "A" swing; Misiorowski always lets his fastball eat. Their battle is just one more way the World Series could be decided by pure speed.

Caminero has reached a bat speed of 75 mph or faster -- that's Statcast's "fast swing" threshold -- on 84% of his swings this season. Two out of every three pitches Misiorowski throws is a fastball, the most among starters, and two out of every three of those fastballs are 100-plus mph. It's just full-on gas from both players.

The raw totals are just mind-boggling. Miz has thrown 1,211 fastballs in triple digits in one single season. That's almost 500 more than any other pitcher has thrown in a year since the start of pitch tracking in 2008 (Aroldis Chapman hit triple digits 723 times in 2016). It's almost 1,000 more than any other starter (Hunter Greene hit triple digits 337 times in 2022). And he's not done yet. Forgive us if we sound like a broken record, but Misiorowski has spent this year breaking basically every velocity record we have.

Caminero, meanwhile, has uncorked the most "fast swings" of any hitter -- 954. We only have bat-tracking data since the 2023 All-Star break, but that's the most in a year by anyone so far. So if anyone has the juice to catch up to Misiorowski's heat, and put a charge into it, it's Caminero.

And these two guys will both dial it up to way beyond just "fast." Forget 100 mph -- Misiorowski has topped out at 105.5 mph this season, a mark only the great flamethrower Chapman has ever eclipsed, and no starting pitcher has come within two mph of (Justin Verlander and Jordan Hicks are the only others to even touch 103). Miz's very first pitch of the playoffs was 104.8 mph, a postseason pitch-tracking-era record.

The fastest pitch thrown in the World Series since 2008 is 103.2 mph by Chapman in 2016. The fastest one thrown by a starter is 101.1 mph by Noah Syndergaard in 2015. Misiorowski might shatter both of those marks by the first inning of Game 1 -- maybe even against Caminero.

Will Caminero's bat be fast enough to catch up to Miz's extreme heat? Well, he's reached a bat speed of 80 mph or higher on 536 of his swings this season -- more than the entire Brewers lineup combined (499). And we just saw what that type of bat speed can do: On Caminero's homer off Cade Smith in the Rays' clinching win in the ALCS, his swing speed there was 81.2 mph. The result was the first homer the Guardians closer had ever allowed on his splitter in the big leagues.

Caminero will need every last drop of that bat speed to turn around Misiorowski's fastballs. Miz has racked up 354 swings-and-misses, and 168 strikeouts, with his four-seamer this season, both of which are second only to Gerrit Cole's 2019 (384 and 193, respectively) for the most in a season in the pitch-tracking era. The average velocity of those K's for Misiorowski? 101.3 mph.

Somewhat interestingly, the one and only time Misiorowski and Caminero faced off -- that was back on April 1 -- Misiorowski barely threw Caminero any fastballs. Caminero saw three four-seamers and five sliders across two at-bats, and none of those fastballs were in triple digits. But the slider got him. Miz K'd Caminero once, and got him to line out once.

But we're pretty sure that in the World Series, Misiorowski is going to let the fastball rip against Caminero -- especially after seeing how the Guardians attacked him with high heaters in the ALCS. Misiorowski dominates with the high fastball. He's been searching for whiffs on his four-seamer in the playoffs, though, so maybe Caminero can battle him, too.

Really, all we want is for Caminero to take some daddy hacks against Misiorowkski's heaters Friday night. And we fully expect to see it. Whether baseball's fastest hacks connect with baseball's fastest fastballs could decide the game.