Padres vs Brewers Is MLB’s Ultimate Velocity Series

Baseball today is all about velocity, and the San Diego Padres and Milwaukee Brewers are a prime example as they continue to battle in their NLDS matchup that heads into Game 3 on Tuesday night. So much so, in fact, that they’re setting records for pitch speed, according to J.J. Cooper of Baseball America.

Cooper called Game 1 the hardest-thrown game in MLB history, although he did add a couple of caveats. The Statcast data for this only goes back to 2008, so the inclusion of “modern” would have been nice, but the goal of a piece like this is mostly to draw eyeballs, not state complete facts. 

It’s still impressive, though. As Cooper noted, we have 19 years of data to back this up, and there haven’t been any games close to this level of velocity before Milwaukee starter Jacob Misiorowski came along. That’s another caveat that compromises the stat, especially since Cooper noted that Misiorowski has pitched in all five of the highest velocity games and seven of the top eight. 

But Misiorowski wasn’t the only one throwing hard in Milwaukee’s 3-2 win. Brewers reliever Abner Uribe hit 101 mph, while Antonio Senzatela hit 100 to go with 99 from closer Trevor Megill. On the Padres side, Bradgley Rodriguez hit 99 mph, and that was a game sat out by closer Mason Miller. 

A total of 301 pitches were thrown in Saturday’s game, amd the average velocity across all pitches was 95.3 mph, per Cooper. That includes every curveball, slider, cutter, sweeper and changeup, the writer added. 

Another stat related to this is a comp related to the previous record holder. The game was 0.45 mph faster than any other game since 2008, when Statcast began comprehensively tracking pitch velocities. There have been only three other games over the past 19 seasons in which the average velocity was greater than 94 mph, and all three of those other games involved the Brewers and Misiorowski this year.

On a more noteworthy level, the average pitch velocity across MLB continues to creep up. This year it reached 89.6 mph, so we’re not far from jumping into the 90s, and that might be the biggest development of all going forward. 

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about stats like this is the willingness to ignore the basic goal of good pitching, which is to get outs. Modern baseball continues to devolve into a skills competition featuring hard throwing and home runs, with the score kept along the way and a few other skills featured intermittently.