How Will Padres Hitters Fare Against Jacob Misiorowski?

The San Diego Padres will have to face Jacob Misiorowski and the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 1 of the NLDS, in what will be the second matchup of the year against the fastest and most dominant starter in baseball. Miz received special attention against the Padres on May 13 at home, with 10 strikeouts in seven innings without walking a batter and with only four singles allowed. He threw 93 pitches, and 40 of them were fastballs of at least 100 mph that averaged 101.3.

San Diego finished with a swing-and-miss rate of 52.4%, and they put only one ball in play with an exit velocity above 100 mph, a 105.5 mph line-drive single that Gavin Sheets hit in the top of the second inning. Only 12 of those batted balls reached an exit velocity above 85 mph, and the average distance traveled was 155 feet.

Something I love about Miz is that, when he starts moving forward, he does not tire easily. He goes through the path being as aggressive as he is devastating, without the slips of the typical strikeout pitcher who sometimes escapes too much from the strike zone, losing command, or needs many pitches to finish off opponents. In 18 of his 30 starts, he threw 90 or more pitches and, even so, in 14 he managed to secure at least six innings, with a minimum of seven strikeouts in 12 of them.

Although Misiorowski will probably make some adjustments to offer more room to his curveball against lefties and the slider against righties, especially in two-strike counts, the Padres know that most of the time they will see many fastballs over 100 mph, most of them in the upper third of the strike zone. We do not need to remember how difficult it was for the league to hit Misiorowski’s pitches, but there is an interesting point here that perhaps could make the difference in this second matchup of the year. Let’s analyze for a moment this collection of graphs about Miz’s performance when he threw his fireball fastball against San Diego last May.

The highest percentage of pitches was again present in the upper third of the strike zone, looking for that difficult spot where it is much harder for hitters to get to the barrel, although he also located a good portion of his fastball on the outer corner to right-handed hitters. The highest swing-and-miss percentages are also in those areas, as are the higher bat speeds. The results of the three balls put in play that you see were singles, two weak batted balls and Sheets’ line drive.

This will be the biggest challenge for the Padres throughout the entire postseason, and there is a possibility that they will have to face Misiorowski twice. But there is a little bit of comfort here, and it is reasonable, since there is no fastball as dominant throughout the league as Miz’s, but there you can see how there are several Padres hitters who have been successful against that type of pitch. There are five hitters with an xSLG above .450, led by Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts, who were surpassed only by James Wood (.775) of the Nationals.

As you can see here, there are four hitters with at least one hit among the seven active players on this postseason roster who have faced Misiorowski, including Hays and Tatis Jr. going 2-for-3. Manny Machado is the only one who has struck out a couple of times, and the entire lineup combines for a .300/.300/.300 line, with no extra-base hits, five strikeouts and no walks.

The past sample is small, and the challenge in this Game 1 is immense, so we will see if the Padres can have a chance against Misiorowski and change the dominant story from the regular season.

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