Jacob Misiorowski's First Pitch of the World Series Was the Fastest Ever Thrown in One — 103.5 mph

- The pitch: Jacob Misiorowski's first pitch of World Series Game 1 — a fastball to Tampa Bay's Yandy Díaz, taken high for a ball — clocked 103.5 mph on Statcast, the fastest pitch ever recorded in a World Series game in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008). - The records broken: Aroldis Chapman's overall Series mark (103.2 mph, 2016) and Noah Syndergaard's starter mark (101.1 mph, 2015) — the starter record fell by 2.4 mph, on pitch one. - The night: Misiorowski reached 100 mph on 38 pitches, a World Series record, and earned the win — 5 innings, 1 run, 4 hits, 3 strikeouts — as Milwaukee won 3-2 for its first World Series victory since 1982.

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MILWAUKEE — Jacob Misiorowski needed exactly one pitch to own a World Series record that had stood for a decade.

The first pitch of the game — of the entire World Series — left the Milwaukee Brewers right-hander's hand at 103.5 mph, a fastball Tampa Bay leadoff man Yandy Díaz took above the strike zone for ball one on Friday night at American Family Field. The stadium video boards read 103.4. MLB's Statcast system said 103.5, and with that, the record was his: the fastest pitch ever recorded in a World Series game since pitch tracking began in 2008.

The mark he took belonged to Aroldis Chapman, who touched 103.2 mph for the Chicago Cubs in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the 2016 World Series — a pitch Cleveland's Coco Crisp grounded to second. Chapman was a closer airing it out at the end of a game. Misiorowski is a starting pitcher, and he did it before most of the crowd had sat down.

That distinction is the bigger story. The previous fastest World Series pitch by a starter was Noah Syndergaard's 101.1 mph for the New York Mets in Game 3 of the 2015 Series, thrown to Kansas City's Ben Zobrist in the first inning. Misiorowski's first pitch beat it by 2.4 mph — not an inch past the old standard, but a different category of fast.

Then he kept going. His first 10 pitches were all fastballs. Eleven of his 13 pitches in a scoreless first inning were fastballs, 10 of them reached 100 mph, and they averaged 101.9 mph. Two singles put Rays aboard before Junior Caminero lined into a double play to end the inning, and the tone of the night was set: Tampa Bay would spend it trying to catch up to a fastball that kept arriving earlier than swings expected.

By the end of his night, Misiorowski had reached 100 mph with 38 pitches — the most ever thrown in a World Series game in the tracking era, passing the 24 Chapman threw in Game 5 of the 2016 Series. His line was not spotless, and it did not need to be: five innings, one run, four hits, one walk, three strikeouts on 78 pitches, and the win — his first postseason victory as a starter. Tampa Bay's only run against him came in the fourth, when Jonathan Aranda walked, took third on Caminero's double, and scored on a Liam Hicks groundout.

"I had so much adrenaline built up," Misiorowski said. A half-hour after the game ended — after a ninth inning stretched out by a video review that kept the Rays alive — he was still processing it: "I don't even know how to tell you how I felt. I still don't know how I felt. I feel like I'm still trying to take everything in and understand what happened."

Milwaukee gave him a lead before he threw his second pitch of the night's other half: Jackson Chourio singled to open the bottom of the first, Christian Yelich tripled him home, and William Contreras singled Yelich in for 2-0. Chourio's two-out RBI single in the seventh stretched it to 3-1, and that run stood as the winner after a harrowing ninth — the Rays loaded the bases, a game-ending double play was overturned on review, Hicks' groundout made it 3-2, and Trevor Megill struck out Jonny DeLuca with the tying run stranded at third. The Brewers, whose only previous World Series appearance was a seven-game loss in 1982, won a Fall Classic game for the first time in 44 years and lead the Series 1-0.

None of this came out of nowhere. Misiorowski, 24, debuted in June 2025 and has spent his first full season rewriting the velocity record book. He threw 1,115 pitches at 100 mph or higher this season, shattering the old record of 673 by St. Louis' Jordan Hicks in 2018. His fastest pitch of the season, 105.5 mph to the Cubs' Pete Crow-Armstrong on June 27, came within 0.3 mph of Chapman's regular-season record of 105.8, set in 2010. He opened the Division Series on Oct. 3 with a 104.8 mph pitch — the fastest postseason pitch of the tracking era. In the regular season he led the majors in ERA (1.80) and strikeouts (252).

Friday night, all of it arrived on the sport's biggest stage, on the first pitch he ever threw in a World Series.

Game 2 is Saturday night in Milwaukee: Drew Rasmussen starts for Tampa Bay against Logan Henderson for the Brewers. Whoever takes the ball for either team will be measured against a number that now belongs to Misiorowski — 103.5.

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The Argument — Misiorowski vs. the Record Book

— Misiorowski vs. the Record Book

One 103.5 mph pitch makes a headline. What Misiorowski actually broke on Friday is bigger, and it is in the volume: Chapman set his record as a closer throwing a handful of maximum-effort pitches in the ninth inning. Misiorowski matched that speed as a starter on pitch one — then reached 100 mph 37 more times in the same game, something no pitcher in World Series history had ever done. His season total of 1,115 pitches at 100+ nearly doubled a record that had stood since 2018. The fastest-pitch record was the door; the argument is that he walked through it and kept throwing.

The only velocity mark of consequence still above him is Chapman's 105.8 mph regular-season record from 2010. He came within 0.3 mph of it in June.

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Run the comparison yourself in Previously Stats: Stats Hub Compare — Misiorowski vs. Chapman

By the Numbers