In a battle of top stuff, Jacob Misiorowski and Paul Skenes offer contrasting styles

New York Times

5 hours ago

It wasn't just the results that were different on Wednesday afternoon, when Jacob Misiorowski led the Milwaukee Brewers to victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates with five scoreless innings while Paul Skenes had one of the worst starts of his career, going only four innings and giving up four runs. It was a display of two totally different pitching styles.
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While both pitchers showed top-shelf velocity, the slender Misiorowski's fastball sat 99.5 mph, a full tick ahead of Skenes' heater. He also had the benefit of elite extension. Misiorowski releases the ball 7.7 feet off the rubber, more than a full foot past where Skenes releases his pitches. That extension leads all starters, and cuts down on the time that the batter has to react to the pitch. The leaders in extension all play above their actual radar gun readings.
This creates quite a power base for Misiorowski, who got 10 whiffs on his four-seamer to Skenes' one in their matchup. Milwaukee's righty should expect to keep getting misses for another reason. While their arm angles aren't too dissimilar — 31 degrees for Misiorowski and 23 degrees for Skenes, both lower than average but not extreme — their fastball shapes are completely different. Misiorowski gets surprising 'hop' or 'ride' on his pitch, about three inches more than you'd expect given his arm slot. His comps are the fastballs thrown by Mason Miller, Hunter Greene and Jacob deGrom in this light. Skenes gets more than an inch less than you'd expect, making his comps the four-seamers thrown by George Kirby and Sandy Alcantara, both pitchers whose sinkers are the better fastball.
That hop means that Misiorowski likes to live at the top of the zone with the fastball.
Jacob Misiorowski's fastball is already doing Jacob Misiorowski fastball things pic.twitter.com/hr8GZjXNPF
— Nick Pollack (@PitcherList) June 25, 2025
This sets him up to use his hard breaking balls down off that pitch. Nobody in baseball throws a harder slider than the Brewer righty. Nobody! Not even a reliever! Only Cristian Mena throws a harder curveball, and he is a reliever. This is peak deGrom-type stuff, once you factor in the similarities in the fastball and the breaking balls, though Misiorowski is missing the command that deGrom has showed his whole career.
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Skenes' fastball has more horizontal movement than expected, which sets him up to work the sweeper and changeup around that pitch east to west. Maybe it's this sideways philosophy that has led to a gradual use of the changeup (which has more horizontal movement) over the ballyhooed 'splinker' or hybrid splitter/sinker he throws.
Paul Skenes, Dirty 88mph Changeup. 👌 pic.twitter.com/gNS4qybh32
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 13, 2025
Wednesday, Skenes threw nine changeups against five splinkers and continued the trend. He also threw 16 frisbee sweepers, six curveballs that had more sideways movement than usual, and 10 sinkers which had more horizontal movement than any sinker thrown over 97.5 mph this year. Both pitchers have top-shelf stuff among starters, but they couldn't be more different.
Once you sum up all their pitches and compare them, their difference in styles becomes remarkably apparent. Look where they threw their pitches Wednesday (charts from Baseball Savant).
This approach worked better for Misiorowski on Wednesday, producing more whiffs and keeping the Pirates off the board, but Skenes has obviously had a ton of success pitching low in the zone and working more east to west as well.
Going forward, these differences may mute. Maybe Skenes just wasn't getting his four-seamer up as much as he's used to, which would have created more separation and maybe kept the Brewers from zeroing in on those low pitches and taking them for well-timed singles and a double. And in the future, Misiorowski may need to throw more changeups in the zone to keep lefties from laying off that hard slider in that has produced many memorable moments already.
But at least for one game, we got a lesson in how different top of the league stuff can look.
(Top photo illustration of Misiorowski and Skenes: John Fisher/ Getty Images; Benny Sieu / Imagn Images)