MILWAUKEE (AP) — Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski made an extra effort to avoid getting caught up in all the hype surrounding the rookie flamethrower’s highly anticipated matchup with Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes.
“It was just one of those things that you wanted to try and calm yourself down as much as possible and stay off the Internet because I feel like everything I swiped was me and Skenes, me and Skenes, me and Skenes,” Misiorowski said after the Brewers’ 4-2 victory over the Pirates on Wednesday. “I had to mute it, turn it off.”
The way he’s pitching, Misiorowski better get accustomed to the extra attention.
After throwing five shutout innings to outperform the 2024 NL Rookie of the Year, Misiorowski has a 3-0 record and 1.13 ERA. The three hits Misiorowski has allowed thus far is the fewest by any major league pitcher through his first three career starts with a minimum of 16 innings pitched since at least 1901, according to Sportradar.
Plenty of history was made Wednesday.
Misiorowski averaged 99.5 mph and Skenes averaged 98.5 mph on their fastballs. That represented the highest combined fastball velocity by two starting pitchers in the same game since at least 2009, Sportradar said.
Misiorowski reached at least 100 mph on 19 of 74 pitches — reaching a career-best peak of 102.4 — and Skenes got to 100 mph once out of 78 pitches. Since at least 2009, this marked the most combined 100-mph pitches by opposing starters for any game in which both reached that threshold at least once.
“I’ve watched plenty of his games,” Misiorowski said of Skenes. “It’s awesome to face a guy like that and really compare yourself to some of the best.”
The hoopla surrounding this matchup of 23-year-olds didn’t seem to bother Misiorowski, who struck out eight while allowing two hits and two walks. That was apparent well before the game.
“We were sitting over here laughing, joking,” said Brewers catcher Eric Haase, whose locker is just around the corner from Misiorowski’s. “Didn’t seem it was affecting him at all.”
The matchup drew a season-best sellout crowd of 42,774 for a weekday afternoon game. Most fans wanted to see what Misiorowski did next after allowing a total of one hit in his first two outings.
His torrid start could focus attention on Misiorowski at the level of Skenes has received since arriving in the big leagues as a No. 1 overall draft pick who led LSU to a 2023 College World Series title.
Skenes has outperformed those considerable expectations. He was voted NL Rookie of the Year and finished third in Cy Young Award voting last season.
What advice would Skenes give Misiorowski about how to handle the scrutiny that could accompany an emergence to stardom?
“You’ve got to protect yourself, for lack of a better term, obviously with the media, but I assume if he goes and walks around Milwaukee now there’s going to be more people that recognize him and all that,” said Skenes, who met Misiorowski for the first time on Monday. “If he does what he’s supposed to do and everybody thinks he can do, that’s not going away any time soon. Get used to it and find ways to find peace and that kind of thing.”
Skenes (4-7) lasted just four innings while striking out four and allowing four runs, four hits and two walks. This was only the third time in 40 career starts that Skenes has given up as many as four runs.
Milwaukee did all its damage during a second inning in which Skenes faced nine batters, threw 37 pitches and allowed four runs. Never before had Skenes faced that many hitters, thrown that many pitches or yielded that many runs in a single inning.
After Milwaukee loaded the bases on a walk and two singles starting the second, Isaac Collins scored from third as Joey Ortiz grounded to Skenes on an 0-2 pitch. Haase then hit a 1-2 pitch for a bloop RBI double that bounced in front of center fielder Oneil Cruz, who attempted a diving catch. Christian Yelich capped the rally with an RBI single to on a 1-2 offering.
Skenes allowed only one other runner in his other three innings while matching the second-shortest stint of his big league career. His shortest appearance came in his final start last year, when he worked just two innings by design and didn’t allow a runner in a 9-4 victory over the New York Yankees.
The performance raised Skenes’ career ERA from 1.91 to 2.03.
“They did a good job of getting to some pitches,” Skenes said. “I wasn’t unhappy with the execution of all of those, there are probably a couple that could have been better but they did a good job.”
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AP freelance writer Rich Rovito contributed to this report.
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