No pitcher has ever thrown as hard as Jacob Misiorowski in the history of Major League Baseball. And few have been as effective over a one-year run as the Milwaukee Brewers ace, who is likely to win the NL Cy Young award after posting a 1.80 ERA striking out almost 13 batters for every nine innings he pitched during the 2026 regular season.
Misiorowski threw 1,115 pitches at least 100 mph during the 2026 regular season, according to Baseball Savant, obliterating the previous high of 673 set by Jordan Hicks in 2018. That has continued during the playoffs: Misiorowksi fired a combined 96 pitches that topped triple digits in his first two postseason starts, both Milwaukee wins. The Brewers enter Wednesday’s NLCS Game 3 with a 2-0 series lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
But Misiorowski’s right arm, which has brought the Brewers to the brink of the World Series, is likely still thousands of high-octane fastballs away from earning him a long-term contract reflective of his value.
Under MLB’s current collective bargaining agreement, players typically require six years of service time to reach free agency. For the first half of that period, they make close to the league’s minimum salary. The final three years are open to negotiation, with an arbitrator making the final call if a decision can’t be reached.
Misiorowski, 24, has earned just shy of $790,000 on the field in his second MLB campaign. He’ll boost that number with some cash from playoff incentives and MLB’s pre-arbitration bonus pool, which splits $50 million among early career players. But the 6-foot-7 pitcher isn’t arbitration eligible until 2029, and he’s not projected to reach free agency until after the 2031 season.
Plus, baseball players historically don’t earn as much off the field relative to athlete in other sports, even in the aftermath of a championship-winning season. Outside of Shohei Ohtani, who has leveraged the lucrative Japanese market into an endorsement portfolio that pays him an estimated $125 million annually, the best pitchmen in the sport are Aaron Judge and Bryce Harper, each of whom make $9 million each year from their marketing endeavors.
That number gets even smaller when it comes to starting pitchers: Gerrit Cole and Tarik Skubal represented the high watermark of what hurlers earn off the field on Sportico’s most recent list of the highest-paid baseball players, with both pulling in an estimated $2.5 million each year.
The Brewers, in theory, could reward Misiorowski of their own volition by negotiating a contract extension that buys out his remaining service time and potentially some of his free agent years, a move that is not uncommon among baseball’s top prospects.
Typically, players take these deals for increased long-term security knowing they might be lowering their earnings ceiling near the end of the contracts. And those ceilings can be sky-high: According to Spotrac, eight active starting pitchers are on contracts signed in free agency that pay out at least $25 million annually and last into the 2030s.
Young MLB talents like Konnor Griffin, Kevin McGonigle, Roman Anthony and Pete Crow-Armstrong, the current odds-on favorite for National League MVP, all signed nine-figure deals early in their pro careers that delayed their first chances to hit the open market. Colt Emerson, Cooper Pratt and Luis Lara put pen to paper on extensions before even appearing in an MLB game.
Free agency eligibility has been a point of contention dating to the introduction of the six-year system in 1976. Amid the ongoing labor negotiations in baseball, which is widely expected to result in a work stoppage this winter, MLB agreed to trim the requirement to five years for players over 30 years old. But that won’t help Misiorowski much, considering he’ll be 29 when he is scheduled to hit the open market.
That puts him in a precarious situation. Misiorowski has blown past his professional innings count high of 129 1/3 without any assurance he’ll ever be rewarded with a huge contract. He’s up to 183 innings this season, including the playoffs. While he’s done so happily to assist the Brewers, like any young star pitcher, he is in a position that comes with a high risk of injury.
He has five more seasons until free agency, and the sport’s history is littered with fireballers who saw injuries diminish their earning power before they could capitalize. Former New York Mets ace Matt Harvey dealt with Tommy John surgery, thoracic outlet syndrome and a stress injury in his shoulder all before he hit free agency, while Mark Prior, Noah Syndergaard and Carlos Martinez flamed out before landing big, open market deals (though Martinez at least inked an early career extension with the Cardinals).
Even Skubal, widely seen as the prize of this year’s coming free agent class, saw his own financial future called into question when he had surgery to remove loose bodies from his elbow earlier this year. After he returned to action and was traded to the Dodgers, a survey of 27 MLB insiders predicted that Skubal’s total guarantee could range from $176 million to $500 million, according to ESPN.
For now, all Misiorowski can do is keep toeing the rubber. The Brewers are back in action Wednesday as the series shifts to Los Angeles. Normal rest would return Misiorowski to the mound for Game 5, if it’s necessary—and if it’s not, all eyes will be on him for Game 1 of the Fall Classic in Milwaukee.