There’s a number attached to Jacob Misiorowski’s 2026 season that sounds made up, and it’s not even the wildest part of the story. The Milwaukee Brewers right-hander just became the first pitcher in MLB history to throw 1,000 pitches at 100 mph or harder in a single season, and he did it at 24 years old, in year two of his career. The velocity is the headline. The math nobody’s running yet is the actual story: Randy Johnson, the Hall of Famer this comparison keeps reaching for, didn’t look anything like this until he was 37.
That gap is thirteen years — the entire piece lives in it.
A viral tweet from Jim Miloch made the rounds Monday, stacking Johnson’s age-37 season in 2001 against Misiorowski’s career to date.
https://twitter.com/podoffame/status/2102378391269675214
It’s a fun bit, and it’s also the wrong frame. Comparing a 24-year-old’s total body of work to a 37-year-old’s statistical peak isn’t really a fair fight. It’s a head start nobody’s accounting for.
How Many 100 MPH Pitches Has Misiorowski Thrown This Season?
Misiorowski has thrown 1,053 pitches at 100 mph or harder in 2026, 582 more than any other pitcher in the sport, and enough to make him the first starter in MLB history to clear four digits in a single season.
That gap isn’t close. It isn’t “leads the league” close. It’s “playing a different sport” close. The data here is unambiguous. On July 26, Misiorowski also set the single-game record for most 100-plus mph pitches thrown by a starter, unloading 66 of them in one outing — most starters don’t touch triple digits that many times in a month, let alone a single start. Jacob Misiorowski’s official player profile lists him at 6-foot-7, and that matters here. Leverage like that is part of why the velocity holds deep into starts instead of collapsing the way it does for most hard throwers his size by the fifth inning.
He’s doing all of this at 24, having debuted in the majors on June 12, 2025. This is his second full year in the league. Most pitchers his age are still learning to hold a changeup grip under pressure. Misiorowski is setting all-time velocity marks.
Why Randy Johnson’s Age-37 Season Is the Real Comparison Point
At 24 years old, Jacob Misiorowski already holds MLB’s single-season record for 100-plus mph pitches. Randy Johnson, who didn’t hit his statistical peak until age 37, never came close to touching that mark at any age, a gap that only widens the more you look at it.
Johnson’s 2001 season is the one people reach for because it’s the best year of a Hall of Fame career: 21-6, a career-high 372 strikeouts, a 2.49 ERA, his third straight NL Cy Young, and co-MVP honors in a World Series Arizona won outright. That year alone ranks among the best pitching seasons of the last 30 years.
One detail gets lost in the viral version: Johnson debuted in 1988. His age-37 peak arrived 13 seasons into his career, after years of famously erratic control that took most of his 20s to sand down. Baseball-Reference has the full stat log, and it tells the same story every account of Johnson’s early career tells. The Big Unit wasn’t built in a lab. He got there slowly, through mechanical adjustments and a decade of reps, and didn’t become a genuine terror on the mound until his 30s.
Misiorowski skipped that part. He’s producing record-setting marks in year two, at an age when Johnson was still walking more hitters than anyone in the league wanted to watch. Both pitchers share a similar build, too: Johnson at 6-foot-10, Misiorowski at 6-foot-7, the kind of frame that makes a fastball look like it’s arriving from a different angle than everyone else’s. That part of the comparison holds. The timeline doesn’t.
Velocity like this doesn’t stay quiet at the trade deadline, either. Front offices notice pitchers who can miss bats at this rate before they’re fully finished products. It’s the kind of ace-level arm that reshapes a trade deadline, the type of asset a rebuilding club builds an entire winter around. Misiorowski isn’t going anywhere; the Brewers control him for years. But the going rate for this kind of arm is instructive. It’s rare, it’s expensive, and right now Misiorowski is producing it younger than almost anyone the industry can point to.
What Happens When Misiorowski Gets His Own Decade of Refinement?
This is the part that should actually worry the rest of the National League. Johnson’s age-37 peak wasn’t an accident. It was a decade of mechanical tweaks, pitch-mix adjustments, and physical wear finally lining up in the same season. Misiorowski hasn’t had that decade. He’s 24, two years into a career that could run into his late 30s, and he’s already rewriting the record book for raw velocity before anyone’s had the chance to smooth out the rough edges that come standard with a 6-foot-7 frame and a fastball this loud.
I ran this through the same framework I use for evaluating any young power arm: swing-and-miss stuff measured against polish. The answer came out the same way twice. Misiorowski isn’t a finished pitcher yet. He doesn’t need to be. The stuff is already historic. What’s left is sequencing, patience, and the kind of feel for an at-bat that usually takes years to build. Johnson needed 13 seasons to turn that combination into a Cy Young season. Misiorowski is starting from a velocity floor Johnson never had at any age.
Milwaukee is heading into October as the best story in the National League, and Misiorowski is a load-bearing piece of why. The record-setting version of him on the mound right now isn’t the ceiling. It’s the floor. Give him the decade Randy Johnson needed, and this stops being a fun tweet and starts being a real conversation about where he ranks among the hardest throwers to ever start a game. The Brewers have that decade to work with. Watch the rest of this MLB season with that math in mind.
