After a rare stumble against his division rivals, the Milwaukee Brewers ace seeks redemption at home against the Chicago Cubs.
The Milwaukee Brewers have a Cy Young candidate on their hands, but the Chicago Cubs would love to make sure that doesn't happen.
The Cubs have an MVP candidate of their own, so it'll be another incredible series of at-bats between Jacob Misiorowski and Pete Crow-Armstrong.
PCA and the Cubs may have lost, 9-5, the last time Misiorowski pitched, but they hit a home run off of him as part of a five-hit, five-earned-run outing that saw Miz only last four innings.
Misiorowski needed 92 pitches to get through four innings when he only needed 98 or fewer to get through his five appearances in August, all of which were six or more innings.
Now, all of the attention will be on his next start at American Family Field as he looks to bring that 1.97 ERA back down.
Misiorowski looks to bounce back from worst start of year
No one wants to make excuses, but the humidity and conditions definitely played a factor in Misiorowski's next start.
One of the beautiful things about pitching at home is the fact that the Brewers have a retractable roof, so there is more of a controlled climate when the conditions call for it.
Regardless, Miz is the last person to make excuses, but he was spoiled with run support his last time out.
Instead of falling to 14-6, Misiorowski remained at 14-5 with his league-leading ERA and WHIP (0.79).
Suddenly, he's now tied for second with 227 strikeouts, but he has a chance to surpass Gavin Williams with just a two-strikeout game against the Cubs.
With a magic number of nine and 17 games to go, a lot of the pressure has been taken off this Brewers pitching staff.
There's still a lot of work to do, especially if this team wants to end the year with the league's best record for a second consecutive season, but winning the division is an extremely important first step to the postseason.
For Misiorowski, that four-inning start was his shortest since July 20 when the team had him on a pitch count coming out of the All-Star break.
That pitch count seems to be behind him, but fatigue is still very real, and manager Pat Murphy knows he needs to protect Miz at all costs, especially with how much Kyle Harrison and Dustin May have been struggling these past few weeks.
