Top Brewers Pitching Prospect Jacob Misiorowski to be Shut Down Temporarily

2023 had been mostly sunshine and rainbows for top Brewers pitching prospect Jacob Misiorowski. Now, he has hit his first big speed bump of the season.

Misiorowski was originally scheduled to start last Sunday for the Biloxi Shuckers after a dominant performance the previous Tuesday (career high 6 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 3 BB, team record-tying 12 Ks) that earned him Southern League Player of the Week.

Then, on the day of his Sunday start, Shuckers teammate Nick Bennett was named the day's starter in his place. Since Misiorowski was getting one less day of rest due to his starts lining up to have him pitch twice in the same series, it was possible that he was just getting pushed a game to get his normal rest.

But when the pitching probables were named for the next series, he wasn't listed as Tuesday's starter either. He was, however (for the moment anyway), listed as the starter for Biloxi's game tonight. Well, that won't be happening either and now we have an explanation for all the recent missed starts.

Top Brewers pitching prospect Jacob Misiorowski will be temporarily shut down due to arm fatigue.

Yesterday's revelation came courtesy of Adam McCalvy, Brewers beat writer for MLB.com. In it, he mentioned that Misiorowski had reported arm fatigue in the wake of his dominant outing that earned him his second minor league player of the week award this season (he had previously earned one while with the Low-A Carolina Mudcats).

The good news, as McCalvy notes, is that "initial tests did not prompt significant concern about structural damage." So while the team hasn't made a decision about what to do with him going forward quite yet, it's not a foregone conclusion that Misiorowski will be headed straight to the injured list.

A good portion of Brewers fans should be familiar with Misiorowski by now. Considered a draft steal by many when he was selected in the second round of the 2022 draft, he has shot up the organization in his first full season of professional baseball.

Misiorowski has a 3.41 ERA, 1.178 WHIP, and 13.9 K/9 on the season, has gone from Low-A to Double-A, pitched in the MLB Futures Game on All-Star weekend, and is now a Top 100 prospect in all of baseball. He has also thrown 71.1 innings as the Brewers continue to work on stretching him out as a starter, thus workload played a lot into the team's current decision with him.

Luckily, it seems as though there shouldn't be anything to worry about with regards to Misiorowski's health, so Brewers fans can still dream about what it will be like to see him in a Milwaukee uniform, hopefully some time in the not-too-distant future.