Milwaukee Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski is having an amazing season. Is it the best season of any pitcher in all of major league baseball, though? It’s hard to argue against his dominance in 2026. Despite a 4-2 record through 10 starts on the season, the former LSU Tiger is leading Major League Baseball (MLB) in total strikeouts (88) and strikeouts per nine innings (13.9). He has the third-best ERA for a starting pitcher in the league (1.89) and has appeared unhittable in almost every start.
Jacob Misiorowski: Let WHERIP Decide
The pitching statistic WHERIP was created in the 2025 season by a sports writer at Stadium Rant and has become the final say on how good a pitcher is. The premise is simple. Baseball already tracks walks and hits allowed by a pitcher every on average every inning (WHIP), and they track earned runs given up on average per nine innings (ERA). WHERIP divides the ERA by nine to get the average earned runs given up per inning, and adds it to the WHIP, to create Walks+Hits+Earned Runs per Inning Pitched.
This season, Misiorowski’s WHERIP is 1.087. The MLB’s best WHERIP in 2025 was 1.167 by the National League Cy Young winner, Paul Skenes. The second-best was 1.246 by American League Cy Young winner Tarki Skubal. That means that through 10 starts in 2026, Misiorowski is pitching better than the top two players in 2025. This is 2026, though, and while The Miz is blowing those numbers out of the water, he only has the second-best WHERIP in the league.
The top spot belongs to the guy who led the league last season, Pittsburgh Pirates ace Skenes. He has an unthinkable 1.000 WHERIP in 2026, and his lethal accuracy from the mound is found in an area where he further dominates Misiorowski: strikeouts per walk. For every free pass Skenes allows, he strikes out 7.88 batters. The Brewers star pitcher has a 4.9:1 ratio, which is nowhere near Skenes, because he is nowhere near as accurate. It may sound insane, but Skenes is what Greg Maddux would have been if he threw 102mph.
This is not a knock on Misiorowski by any means. Both he and Skenes are significantly ahead of the next two guys, Michael McGreevy (1.113) and Chris Sale (1.128). It’s early in the year, and once these players get into the dog days of summer, it’s likely they won’t have the same type of dominance they had in the cooler days of spring. It’s unclear where Misiorowski will end up by the end of the season, but he has a real chance to dethrone Skubal as the AL Cy Young winner.
Nobody has a chance to dethrone Skenes, who, all of last season and so far this season, is still the best pitcher in the game. The question is, how many more seasons can he continue to lead the league in WHERIP? Can Misiorowski, Sale, Skubal, or someone else take the crown from him? Maybe/Maybe not. Either way, one thing is clear. Misiorowski is for sure a top-five pitcher already, in just his second season.
