MILWAUKEE — The buzz leading up to Friday’s game was all about Spencer Jones.
The buzz, zip and pop during it was all about another 2022 draft pick: Jacob Misiorowski.
The Brewers flamethrower overshadowed Jones’ MLB debut, dominating the Yankees with an overpowering fastball and handing them a 6-0 loss in the interleague series opener.
Jones went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts and a walk, one of just four baserunners that Misorowski allowed across six shutout innings in which he struck out 11. The Yankees (26-13) only mustered two hits off him — a pair of singles by José Caballero — as Misiorowski cooled off what had been a red-hot offense.
“He’s got an electric fastball,” Jones said. “I guess I’ve never seen pitches that hard in my life. Being able to foul off a couple is pretty great, so I’ll take that for now.”
Max Fried, meanwhile, lost his command in a 40-pitch second inning and paid for it, giving up a four spot. The left-hander went on to make it through six innings, but the damage was already done as the Brewers (20-16) leaned on Misiorowski.
“I didn’t do my job to be able to keep us in it and allow our offense to string a few together,” Fried said. “It just made it a little bit uncompetitive.”
After the Yankees selected Jones with the 25th-overall pick in 2022, the Brewers nabbed Misiorowski 38 picks later. The 6-foot-7 right-hander made his MLB debut last season and has come out of the gates this year pitching like one of the game’s best.
In the first inning Friday, that included making some history. Facing Trent Grisham, Ben Rice and Aaron Judge, Misiorowski threw 10 pitches to retire the side — striking out Grisham and Rice on three pitches each and getting Judge to fly out — five of which registered as the five fastest pitches recorded by a starter during the tracking era (dating back to 2008).
They came in at 103.6, 103.5, 103.3, 103.3 and 103.2 mph during an inning in which his slowest pitch was a 102.3 mph fastball.
“Obviously he was good and got a lead and was able to get after it,” manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s that lower slot that he has and gets the extension, almost more so than the velocity. I thought there were a couple times we were getting some good at-bats against him and controlling the zone a little bit. But he had that big lead and got after it pretty good.”
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The 24-year-old Misiorowski did not let up much from there. He hit 103.6 mph twice more — both on pitches to Jones while averaging 101.1 mph on 57 four-seam fastballs. He combined that with a slider (that averaged 95.6 mph), a curveball and a changeup to stifle a Yankees lineup that had scored at least seven runs in six of its last seven games and outscored opponents 123-52 over its last 19 games.
The Yankees’ best chance against Misiorowski came in the fifth inning, when Jones drew a one-out walk and Caballero followed with a single. But Misiorowski got Austin Wells looking at a 100 mph heater and Ryan McMahon whiffing at a 101 mph heater to squash the threat.
Fried made quick work of the Brewers with a nine-pitch first inning but then got into trouble in the bottom of the second. He gave up a leadoff single to ex-Yankee Gary Sanchez before walking the next two batters on eight straight balls (his third walk, later in the game, also came on four pitches).
The Brewers then put four straight balls in play, none hit particularly hard but in the right spots for three singles — including one from former Yankees farmhand Brandon Lockridge, who added another RBI single in the third inning before leaving the game in the fourth on a cart after smashing his knee into the left field wall on a sliding attempt to catch a foul fly ball — and a fielder’s choice that turned into a 4-0 lead.
By that point, Jake Bird had begun to warm up, but Fried came back to strike out the next two batters — if he had not gotten the last batter out, Boone was going to give him the hook — to make sure he did not leave his bullpen out to dry after it had to cover 14 innings between Wednesday and Thursday.
“That was kind of the game right there [in the second inning],” Fried said. “I needed to be able to come through and wasn’t able to do it.”
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