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Jacob Misiorowski has been in the major leagues less than a year — he debuted last season, on June 12 — yet already his legend seems to be growing, thanks to a fastball of voracious velocity.
Misiorowski just capped a historic month of May with another dominant outing Sunday, pitching seven scoreless innings while allowing three hits with eight strikeouts as his Milwaukee Brewers defeated the Houston Astros. Maybe his most impressive pitch of the game was a 3-2 fastball to superstar slugger Yordan Alvarez in the sixth inning, when the right-hander reared back and blew a 101 mph heater past Alvarez.
“This is painted 101 at the top of the zone,” mentioned Brewers color analyst Tim Dillard. “Again, this is a fastball that when hitters are seeing it, it just never comes down. It just keeps going.”
A lot of Misiorowski’s fastballs keep going, right into the glove of the Milwaukee catcher, often after an overmatched batter swings late at the high-octane velocity. Misiorowski made six starts in May, finishing 5-0 with a 0.23 ERA, allowing just one run in 38⅓ innings while striking out 57 batters.
“It’s electric. It’s extremely impressive stuff, if not the best in the league,” teammate Jake Bauers mentioned. “When he’s pounding the zone, it’s tough to beat him. It’s been fun to watch. He’s got a few more starts for us this year, so hopefully he keeps pushing.”
The tall-but-true tale: Misiorowski threw 241 fastballs in the month at 100 mph or faster. Batters swung at 125 of them, fouling off 48 and putting just 20 of them in play. Just five of those 20 went for hits, all of them singles. But 100 hardly tells the whole story of his fastball. Misiorowski threw 71 pitches in the month that clocked 102 mph or faster, including starts with 22 each against the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals.
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So, yes, a historic month. Except … was it even the best May in the majors?
Philadelphia Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sanchez had his own history-making month, making five starts, pitching 39 innings and not allowing a run. He became the first pitcher since Orel Hershiser in 1988 to make at least five starts in a calendar month without allowing a run and enters June with a streak of 44⅔ consecutive scoreless innings, the seventh-longest streak of all time and within shouting distance of Hershiser’s record of 59 innings.
Let’s take a look at which Cy Young contender had the better month of May, starting with a fun debate.
The award began in the NL in 1975 with Don Sutton of the Los Angeles Dodgers named the first winner that April, going 4-1 with a 1.97 ERA, three complete games and 43 strikeouts in six starts. Sutton won in May as well. For some reason, the American League didn’t begin its award until 1979, with Tommy John of the Yankees capturing initial honors after going 4-0 in April with a 1.13 ERA and nine strikeouts — yes, nine strikeouts in five starts, or a solid four innings of work from Misiorowski.
Four of the AL’s six winners in 1979 were relievers, although the award has almost always gone to starting pitchers, and exclusively so since 2017, when the Reliever of the Month award started. Roger Clemens has won the most times, with 15. Greg Maddux (10), Randy Johnson (8), Pedro Martinez (8) and Johan Santana (8) are next on the list.
While many pitchers have won the award twice in a season, and five have won three times (Santana in 2004, Jake Peavy in 2007, Dallas Keuchel in 2015, Corey Kluber in 2017 and Gerrit Cole in 2019), only one pitcher has won four times in one season — the great Pedro.
In 1999, Martinez won in April, May, June and September, on his way to going 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and 313 strikeouts in 213 innings. He won again in April 2000 and probably should have won in May, when he had a 0.86 ERA with 54 strikeouts. From the beginning of the 1999 season through May 2000, Martinez went 31-6 in 290 innings with a 1.80 ERA, 417 strikeouts and a .510 OPS allowed in what might have been the greatest two-year peak ever for a starting pitcher, at least in modern times.
Indeed, Martinez was so much better than the other pitchers in the league that he didn’t have much competition for Pitcher of the Month. Not like the debate over this May. The final statistics:
Misiorowski: 6 GS, 5-0, 0.23 ERA, 38⅓ IP, 14 H, 1 R, 6 BB, 57 SO, .109/.154/.116
Sanchez: 5 GS, 4-0. 0.00 ERA, 39 IP, 25 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 45 SO, .181/.204/.210
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The case for Misiorowski: Going back to the beginnings of the Pitcher of the Month award in 1975, he’s just the third pitcher with at least five starts, an ERA below 0.50 and at least 50 strikeouts in a month (via the Play Index at Baseball-Reference, which includes March starts as part of April and October starts as part of September). The others: Nolan Ryan in May 1984 (5-0, 0.20 ERA, 50 strikeouts in 45⅓ innings) and Santana in September 2004 (5-0, 0.45 ERA, 52 strikeouts in 40 innings).
What has made Misiorowski’s leap so impressive has been his fastball command — he has walked just six batters in his six starts. He averaged 4.2 walks per nine innings as a rookie last season, and that’s down to 2.4 in 2026 (1.4 in May). If Misiorowski continues to post a walk rate under 5%, he’s going to be nearly unbeatable given how difficult he is for batters to square up.
The case for Sanchez: Since 1975, he and Hershiser have been the only pitchers to make at least five starts in a month and not allow a run. Hershiser’s run: six starts, five complete games, five shutouts. The one game he didn’t win was the final one, when he pitched 10 scoreless innings to break Don Drysdale’s scoreless innings record. Hershiser added eight scoreless innings in Game 1 of the NLCS before allowing two runs in the ninth, so you can argue his actual streak was 67 innings.
If Misiorowski is the definition of power pitching at the top of the strike zone, Sanchez is the definition of pitchability at the bottom of the zone. He throws plenty hard enough, averaging 95 mph on his sinker, pitching from an upright, easy-looking delivery. From there, he spots one of the best changeups in the game along with a wipeout slider. Everything is down, so he induces one of the highest ground ball rates in the majors while being difficult to touch for home runs. While Misiorowski has to show this is more than a one-month hot streak due to his command reaching a new level, Sanchez, in his sixth major league season, has been at an elite level for a while now, finishing second in the Cy Young voting in 2025.
Going back to 1975 … absolutely.
We used the following criteria: at least five starts, ERA under 1.00, at least four wins and at least 30 innings pitched. There have been just nine other months when at least two pitchers met all those criteria, with four of those instances coming from pitchers in the same league (* indicates won the award):
June 1997 (AL)
Wilson Alvarez, Chicago White Sox: 4-0, 0.83 ERA, 43⅓ IP, 31 H, 24 SO
Randy Johnson*, Seattle Mariners: 4-1, 0.92 ERA, 49 IP, 25 H, 68 SO
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June 2014 (NL)
Clayton Kershaw*, Los Angeles Dodgers: 6-0, 0.82 ERA, 44 IP, 26 H, 61 SO
Jake Arrieta, Chicago Cubs: 4-0, 0.92 ERA, 39⅓ IP, 21 H, 48 SO
August 2019 (NL)
Jack Flaherty*, St. Louis Cardinals: 4-1, 0.71 ERA, 38 IP, 19 H, 47 SO
Sonny Gray, Cincinnati Reds: 4-0, 0.74 ERA, 36⅔ IP, 18 H, 44 SO
August 2022 (NL)
Zac Gallen*, Arizona Diamondbacks: 5-0, 0.68 ERA, 40 IP, 20 H, 44 SO
Julio Urias, Los Angeles Dodgers: 4-1, 0.90 ERA, 30 IP, 19 H, 34 SO
Some good debates, no doubt, but not as good as Misiorowski versus Sanchez. If we stretch the consideration to include both leagues, the best one probably goes back to Hershiser:
September 1988
Orel Hershiser, Dodgers: 5-0, 0.00 ERA, 55 IP, 30 H, 34 SO
Mark Langston, Mariners: 5-1, 0.50 ERA, 53⅔ IP, 23 H, 46 SO
Strangely, Langston did NOT win pitcher of the month in the AL, although he did win in August despite a 4.22 ERA (Bruce Hurst won in September, going 2-2 with a 2.27 ERA). Langston threw three shutouts, pitched eight scoreless innings in another start, lost a shutout in the ninth inning of his final start, and the game he lost came when he allowed a run in the bottom of the 11th inning (on his 137th pitch).
Cristopher Sanchez gave up no runs over five starts in the month of May. AP Photo/Gregory BullJust as that was a great month for Hershiser and Langston, this was a landmark month for Misiorowski and Sanchez. Who should win Pitcher of the Month? Misiorowski was the more dominant of the two, tougher to hit, with more strikeouts and less reliance on balls in play. He certainly received more headlines and social media clicks with the dynamic nature of his performance. He started one more game than Sanchez, but Sanchez still got two more outs.It’s impossible to call, but … well, zero runs is zero runs. Sanchez gets my vote.
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