MILWAUKEE — The Brewers had 11 days to figure out how to get the life back on the best fastball on the planet, the four-seamer of Jacob Misiorowski. They are confident they have found the answers in time for World Series Game 1 tonight.
Misiorowski’s induced vertical break, spin rate and whiff rate on his fastball have dropped in his two postseason starts. He did not make it through five innings against the Padres or Dodgers. In those games he had the two worst whiff rates on his fastball of his career (min. 45 fastballs, 13.8% and 18.5%).
With 11 days of rest, Misiorowski threw a simulated game and a bullpen session. That’s when pitching coach Chris Hook and pitching coordinator Jim Henderson believe they found two mechanical flaws that were causing the lack of late life and “hop” to his fastball. You can see a video breakdown of those flaws above..
Here are those flaws they attacked:
1. Misiorowski was sinking too deeply into his legs.
The key to Misiorowski’s breakout season was adding 25 to 30 pounds in his lower half that gave him more stability and more power. But in the postseason, Misiorowski has been exaggerating how deeply he sinks into his legs before the pushoff phase of his delivery. He was getting too low, which caused him upon release to be more “under” the baseball. Here you can see the difference:
The deeper “drop and drive” style reduced the height of his release point, causing him to lose ride. His release point went from 5.2 feet above the ground in the regular season to just 5.09 feet in October, the lowest of any month in his career.
2. Misiorowski was too deliberate in his delivery.
To control his emotions and guard against being overamped in the postseason environment, Misiorowski slowed his delivery. In the work before World Series Game 1, Hook and Henderson encouraged Misiorowski to move his body faster—to use the adrenaline of the moment and not guard against it.
From when he picked up his left foot to when he planted it, Misiorowski had stretched the time from about 0.8 seconds to 1.1 seconds. In World Series Game 1, you should see him moving faster through the delivery and showing emotion rather than suppressing it.
Count the swings and misses on Misiorowski’s fastball in World Series Game 1. He had only four whiffs on the pitch against the Padres and five against the Dodgers. If he has restored the magic to his heater, as Hook and Henderson believe, he should rack up at least 10 whiffs, his median for the year.
Let’s remember, too, that Misiorowski bears the responsibility of ace in his first full season. The bar is set high. In World Series Game 1 on Friday, at 24 years and 203 days old, he will become the youngest pitcher to start three Game 1s in one postseason, ahead of Cole Hamels of the 2008 Phillies (24–300) and Madison Bumgarner of the 2014 Giants (25–081).
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