Nobody beats the Miz in a Cy Young race.
Milwaukee Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski capped his record-setting breakout season by winning the 2026 NL Cy Young award in unanimous fashion Wednesday. Misiorowski is the 24th pitcher to win it unanimously.
Cristopher Sánchez finished a distant second, while Chris Sale came in third.
Misiorowski is the fourth Brewers pitcher to win a Cy Young, joining Rollie Fingers (1981), Pete Vuckovich (1982), and Corbin Burnes (2021).
Misiorowski dazzled the baseball world with one of the most dominant pitching seasons in recent memory. His 0.80 WHIP and .157 opponents' average were both the lowest by a pitcher with at least 150 innings since Pedro Martínez in 2000 (Martínez set the single-season WHIP record that year). He led the majors in ERA (1.80), strikeouts (252), K/9 (13.0), and FIP (2.17) over 30 starts while recording 16 wins and one record-setting shutout.
He's just the fourth pitcher since 1950 to lead MLB in opponents' average, ERA, and strikeouts in the same season. He's also the ninth since 1913 (when earned runs became an official stat) to tally at least 250 strikeouts with an ERA of 1.80 or lower, per Stathead.
The 24-year-old made jaws drop with his electric arsenal, highlighted by a nearly unhittable fastball that averaged 100.6 mph. Some 1,115 of the pitches he threw in 2026 clocked in at triple-digit velocity - by far the most in a single season during the pitch-tracking era (since 2008) and 442 more than the previous record. Of his four main pitches, only the curveball (88 mph) had an average velocity below 90 mph.
Misiorowski also improved his overall performance to become more than just a hard thrower. He cut his walk rate from 11.4% in his rookie year to 6.6% and allowed only 14 homers in 174 2/3 innings compared to eight in 66 frames last year.
Misiorowski and AL winner Cam Schlittler are the third set of pitchers to win unanimous Cy Youngs in the same season. The other pairs are Denny McLain and Bob Gibson (1968) and Sandy Alcantara and Justin Verlander (2022).
