Jacob Misiorowski is Starting Game 1 of the World Series and Defying Reality
Jeff Passan noted Misiorowski 'does things on the baseball field that defy what we thought possible' and tells unbelievable tales.
is officially taking the mound for the in Game 1 of the tonight, which means the Tampa Bay Rays are about to spend their Friday evening trying to hit a baseball thrown by a 6-foot-7 alien.
ESPN's Jeff Passan dropped a profile on the Brewers ace today, noting that Misiorowski does things on the field that defy reality and tells stories in the clubhouse that his own teammates refuse to believe. When a guy casually throws 14 pitches over 100 mph in his major league debut, you just nod and agree when he tells you whatever wild story he cooked up.
The numbers fully back up the mythology. Misiorowski just wrapped up a 2026 campaign where he posted a hilarious 1.80 ERA and struck out 252 batters in 174 innings. That is not a stat line you get from a normal human being. That is the stat line of a created player in a video game when you turn the difficulty down to rookie and max out the sliders.
Milwaukee won 103 games this year and just finished dismantling the two-time defending champions to get here. Now they hand the ball to their 24-year-old phenom to set the tone at home against a red-hot Rays squad.
The sportsbooks have the Brewers favored to take the opener, and it is not hard to see why the market respects the home team. Betting against a guy who strikes out a third of the batters he faces is a great way to end up staring at a zero-balance account by the seventh-inning stretch.
Game 1 kicks off tonight in Milwaukee before the series eventually shifts to Tampa Bay next week. If Misiorowski comes out dealing his usual unhittable nonsense, the Rays are going to need a lot more than good luck to avoid an early series deficit.