MILWAUKEE – It was 6-foot-7 vs. 6-foot-7.
Power vs. power.
And Yankees superstar Aaron Judge came away impressed by budding Brewers star Jacob Misiorowski.
“You see some guys that throw 103 [mph], but you get a little bit more time. A guy like that, where he's almost dropping it in the catcher's mitt, man, it makes for a tough day,” Judge said Saturday, a day after Misiorowski struck out 11 and touched 103.6 mph in his first career start against the Bronx Bombers. “I was excited to get a chance to face him and see him for the first time.
“You know, I’ve seen a lot of his games and seen what he's done; it's impressive stuff, man. They've got a great, great, great young star over there.”
Misiorowski retired Judge all three times they squared off, starting in the first inning when Misiorowski had Judge in an 0-2 count and was one pitch shy of an immaculate inning. Judge took a fastball low and away for a ball before lining out on the next pitch, then struck out on a 102.0 mph fastball in the fourth inning and a 102.4 mph fastball in the sixth.
The last at-bat might have been the most eye-opening, since Misiorowski’s legs had begun to fatigue and he walked Trent Grisham leading off that frame before locking in to retire the next three, including Judge and Cody Bellinger on strikeouts Nos. 10 and 11 of the night.
“He's able to mix it up, kind of keep us off-balance, and even though you're up there expecting 103, all of a sudden he'll mix in a curveball and drop in the slider when he needs to,” Judge said. “He kind of worked all quadrants with the heater, you know? He'd be away with it. He'd be in with it. It makes for an ‘uncomfy’ at-bat. But that's the type of guys you want to face in the big leagues.”
Judge called Misiorowski’s heater “one of the best fastballs I’ve ever seen.”
But it’s not just the velocity.
“It's the extension, it's the arm slot. It adds a little bit more deception,” Judge said. “For a while, guys were trying to get those ride fastballs where it's 20-21 ‘vert’ [induced vertical break, a Statcast metric that accounts for the rising effect of some fastballs], but you look up on the board and it may say only 15 vert, 16 vert. When he's throwing it from down here, and it's almost rising when it gets to the plate at 103, man, it makes for a tough day.
“And then you've got a guy like that who has good feel for his off-speed pitches and can kind of keep you off-balance, like, ‘OK, I'm going to attack a first pitch heater there,’ and then he drops in a 92 mph curveball on you. It's like, ‘Now what's he going to do?’ He does a great job of kind of keeping you off-balance, plus having the electric stuff.”
On Friday night, that electric stuff included a 98.6 mph slider – the fastest pitch this season classified by Statcast as a slider. Going into Saturday’s slate of games, Misiorowski accounted for the 87 hardest sliders thrown across MLB this season.
Statcast has pitch data back to 2008, and there’s only one faster slider on record: a Craig Kimbrel 99.6 mph pitch in 2015.
“I've never seen a 98 mph slider before,” Judge said.