How does he do it?
How does Jacob Misiorowski throw a baseball up to 105.5 mph, about 10 mph faster than the average major league pitcher?
The Milwaukee Brewers flamethrower will take the mound when the Milwaukee Brewers play the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series at American Family Field in Milwaukee on Sunday, Oct. 11.
Then physics demonstration will unfold.
Radar guns at the ready.
Misiorowski firing fastballs
Batters whiffing. Fans marveling.
And the lanky, 6-foot-7 righthander, throwing from a 3/4-arm delivery and out of the stretch, generating mind-bogging velocity as a starting pitcher.
"The center mass speed, his hip-shoulder separation, his deep range of shoulder external rotation," Bob Zimmermann, Misiorowski’s
personal pitching instructor and a guru of mechanics, explained to USA TODAY Sports. "And having more leverage through longer limbs and the ability to accelerate through all of this and being able to put a lot of force into the ground with his front foot and stop and transfer that energy"
It’s heavy science. For the non-scientist, anyway. But the story of Misiorowski helps bring it all together.
The baby giraffe
Zimmermann, the pitching coach, operated Athlete Performance Center in Lenexa, Kansas when Misiorowski arrived one day about 10 years ago.
Misiorowski was 14 and already 6-foot-4.
“So I actually saw Jake when he was like a super-lean baby giraffe," Zimmermann said. “Didn't really know how to control the body, but was extremely athletic."
Video of Misiorowski pitching for Grain Valley High School in Kansas shows him almost falling over during his follow through.
Zimmerman, a former pitcher, played at South Missouri State and in 2020 won Missouri Valley Freshman of the Year. He helped lead his team to the College World Series in 2003. That same year the Los Angeles Angels picked him in the fourth round of the MLB draft.
He never made it to the big leagues – but he decided to make a difference working with other pitchers.
It would be years before he had another chance with Misiorowski.
'All over the place'
At Grain Valley High School in Kansas, Misiorowski was clocked pitching at 80 mph to 82 mph as a freshman, according to coach Brian Driskell.
“However, he didn't really have an idea of where it was going," Driskell said.
And so the pitcher who is a top contender for the NL Cy Young Award started his high school career on the freshman team.
"He stayed there pretty much the whole year, and he had some good innings, had some bad innings,'' Driskell said. “It's kind of all over the place.”
Lots of strikeouts. Too many walks. And the baby giraffe continued to grow and show special traits.
Driskell says Misiorowski is athletic enough to kick a rolling baseball into the air and grab it with his hand. And that he has an exceptional vertical jump. But Misiorowski stayed focused exclusively on baseball, and the sport rewarded him.
During his senior season, Misiorowski allowed only 11 hits, according to Driskell. Then there was feedback from the radar guns tracking the velocity of his fastballs.
“Yeah, he was 95, 96, pretty consistently,’’ Driskell said.
'It is going to be crazy'
There were setbacks.
He went undrafted out of high school, when the COVID-19 pandemic cut the MLB draft to five rounds.He suffered a torn meniscus during his freshman year at Crowder College, a community college in Neosho, Missouri. But he got healthy, he reconnected with Zimmermann and the mechanics work took off.
(Zimmermann sounds as mystified about why it took Misiorowski years to resume working with him as other people are about how his client pitches with so much velocity.)
“So he is balanced/controlled early,’’ Zimmerman said of Misiorowski's delivery, “but he does a great job of gaining ground with his center mass the moment his foot lifts off the ground.“He achieves early momentum in his center mass that he is able to magnify in his rotation. Because he is 6’7 his center mass sits higher and is able to build more speed during travel than somebody sat that is 6’2."Misiorowski was clocked at 100 mph as a sophomore at Crowder.
At the 2022 MLB Draft Combine, according to sports scientist Joe Eisenmann, Misiorowski’s fastball averaged 99.8 mph and topped out at 100.7 mph.
'It was electric'
The Brewers selected Misiorowski in the second round of the 2022 draft and he signed for $2.35 million. He made his MLB debut in 2025 and that year he was clocked throwing at fast as 102.2 mph.
Misiorowski worked closely with the Brewers staff. But in the offseason, he continued his work with Zimmermann.“He could always accelerate," Zimmermann said. “Even when I saw him when he was 14, he could accelerate. It was electric even at that point.“And you're like, man, once this kid gets strong and learns how to stabilize his body a little bit, it is going to be crazy what he can do."On June 26, in the first inning of a game against the Chicago Cubs, Misiorowski struck out Pete Crow-Armstrong with a fastball. It was clocked at 105.5 mph.
According to MLB.com, it was the fastest pitch tracked by a starting pitcher in MLB history.
What's humanly possible?
Misirorowski How much faster can humans pitch.
“This is about as fast as humans can throw, 105," Glenn Fleisig, Director of Biomechanics Research at American Sports Medicine Institute, told USA TODAY Sports.
The primary reason, Fleisig said, is ulnar collateral ligament (also known as the Tommy John ligament) in the elbow.
“That's the weakest link," Fleisig said. “The other weak links are your rotator cuff in your shoulder.
“Major league pitchers are bigger and stronger than ever before. Their muscles are stronger … but ligaments like the Tommy John ligaments and tendons, they’re really hard to strengthen."
The physical vulnerability appears to be a stop sign, as Fleisig explains it.
“Where we're at today with the 100 mile per hour baseball pitchers, this is the limit that puts the maximum load on the UCL and that it can handle before breaking," he said. "That's why we have so many injuries and that's why it won't go farther.”
But Misiorowski will take the mound again, and the baseball world will tune it to see what’s possible.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Brewers phenom Jacob Misiorowski went from 'baby giraffe' to Cy Young lock
