MILWAUKEE -- Jacob Misiorowski brought the heat Sunday afternoon. Then he made history, again, with it.
The Brewers’ flamethrowing right-hander struck out 12 batters across five dominant innings in an 11-2 win over the Rockies at American Family Field. Misiorowski allowed one run on one hit as Milwaukee held a 3-1 lead when his outing ended. He walked nobody, hit one batter and threw 59 of his 83 pitches for strikes.
Misiorowski announced immediately that this would not be an ordinary afternoon. He struck out the side in the first inning while throwing 14 four-seam fastballs, generating five whiffs and throwing that pitch no lower than 102.9 mph. His fastest pitch that frame registered at 104.3 mph.
He did it again in the second, striking out the side to begin his outing with six consecutive punchouts. Misiorowski then fanned his seventh straight batter to open the third, setting a Brewers franchise record for consecutive strikeouts to begin a game.
The Rockies finally put a ball in play against him with one out in the third. By the end of the fourth, however, Misiorowski had retired all 12 batters he faced and struck out 11 of them. He became the first pitcher since at least the start of the divisional era in 1969 to record 11 strikeouts without allowing a hit through the first four innings of a game.
Misiorowski attacked Colorado almost exclusively with his most overpowering weapon. He threw 66 four-seam fastballs, accounting for 80 percent of his pitches after entering the day using the pitch nearly 63 percent of the time. Eight of his strikeouts came on pitches clocked at 103 mph or faster, the most in a game since pitch tracking began in 2008.
For four innings, Colorado had no answer. The Rockies’ first finally came in the fifth, when Cole Carrigg sent a 101.9 mph fastball just over the left-field wall for an opposite-field home run. The blast ended Misiorowski’s perfect-game, no-hit and shutout bids after he retired the first 14 hitters, 12 via strikeout.
Misiorowski hit the next batter but induced a groundout to escape further damage. After needing only 53 pitches to complete his first four innings, he threw 30 in the fifth, and Chad Patrick began warming up in the Milwaukee bullpen. With the Brewers carefully monitoring Misiorowski’s workload during the second half, manager Pat Murphy ended the 24-year-old’s outing there.
It marked Misiorowski’s ninth game with at least 10 strikeouts this season and the 11th of his young career. Milwaukee supplied him with three runs in the first inning, and Misiorowski made that early cushion hold with five innings that were equal parts overpowering and historic.