Hey, it’s Zack.
Milwaukee is one win from a championship. The Brewers beat Tampa Bay 10 to 1 on Monday night at the Trop and they lead the World Series three games to none. The first two games were close. Milwaukee won them 3 to 2 and 5 to 4, and in Game 2 they came back from four runs down. Monday night was a blowout. Robert Gasser gave Milwaukee six scoreless innings and allowed one hit. Tampa Bay finished the night with three hits and a run in the ninth that changed nothing. Game 4 is Tuesday night in Tampa Bay, and one more win gives Milwaukee the first title in team history.
Beyond the game, I want to talk about something October brings back every year, right on schedule. The older players get microphones.
THE ENTRANCE
Start with Friday night. First pitch of the World Series. Jacob Misiorowski threw it 103.5 miles per hour. That is the fastest pitch ever recorded in a World Series game. The old record was Aroldis Chapman at 103.2, back in 2016. Misiorowski broke it with the first pitch of the series. It was up and out of the zone for ball one. Nobody cared. The number was the story.
He kept doing it. He threw 38 pitches at 100 or better that night. When I came up, a staff might have one guy who could touch 100. Now teams have three or four of them in the bullpen, and a 24-year-old starter is sitting on it for five innings.
Somewhere this weekend, a player from the late 90’s to early 2000s heard that number and said what guys from that era say every year. The radar gun reads different now. We threw just as hard as these guys do. Then it keeps going. These players today do not know how to play. I have heard some version of that every October since I retired. It is a tired line.
THE DELIVERY
The radar part deserves a fair hearing, because some of it is true. A baseball slows down on its way to the plate. It is fastest right out of the pitcher’s hand. The early guns picked the ball up later in the flight, after it had already slowed down, so the same pitch showed a smaller number. Today’s numbers are taken at release. Baseball America went through the whole history of it. A pitch that reads 95 now could have read 92 or 93 in the late 90s- early 2000s. That part of the argument is real.
It explains two or three miles per hour. It does not explain the rest of it. Every pitch in the big leagues has been measured the same way since 2008, out of the hand, on the same scale. On that scale, the average fastball in 2008 was about 92 miles per hour. This year it was almost 95. The measuring did not change during those years. The pitchers did.
Pitchers threw 214 pitches at 100 or better in all of 2008. This year they threw more than 5,600. You cannot blame a radar setting for that.
Pitchers also work at this now in a way they did not used to. There are programs built on adding velocity. There is a whole business around it. Teams draft for it and they develop for it. You can argue about what that does to arms, and that is a fair argument to have. It is just a different one. It still does not make the numbers fake.
Those late 90’s-early 2000s teams had pitchers who could really throw. I am not here to tell you they could not. Some of them threw just as hard. Those guys were great. These guys are great too. I have never understood why it has to be one or the other.
The part I cannot get with is where the talk stops being about radar guns and turns into these guys not knowing how to play. Watch Monday night again. Milwaukee scored eight runs in the fifth inning with two outs. Eight. With the season sitting right there. That is not a team that missed the lessons. That is a team doing the hardest part of the sport, one hitter after another, in a World Series game.
I should be clear about where I stand in all this. I played from 2011 to 2023, Baltimore and New York. I never pitched in a World Series either, so I am watching this one like you are. But I have only been out three years. I shared clubhouses with players who are in this series right now. I faced hitters who are in it. When somebody from twenty years ago talks about the players on that field like they cannot play, i get offended.
Hitting is harder than it has ever been. The pitching is better, the video is better, and every weakness a hitter has gets found and passed around the league in about a week. A young player today is not soft because the game looks different on television. He is playing a harder version of it, and most of them are playing it well.
THE SAVE
I work on this side of it now. I write this newsletter and I go on shows, and people hand me the same microphone. October is when everybody from my side of the fence gets asked what the game used to be. I hear how some guys answer it, and I hope I never answer it that way.
I got twelve years in the big leagues. That was the job, and I was lucky to have it as long as I did. The game does not have to get worse for those twelve years to have been good. A kid throwing 103 in the World Series does not take anything away from me. It never did.
Tampa Bay gets one more night to keep its season going. Milwaukee gets a night to finish it. Either way, the best players in the world are on that field Tuesday night. I played with some of them. I am not going to sit here and tell you they are doing it wrong.
Talk soon, Z
The Save is a personal newsletter based on my own experiences, opinions, and recollections. The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not represent any team, organization, union or employer past or present. When discussing players, contracts or organizational decisions I am sharing my perspective as a former player — not making legal or financial claims. When I share stories involving others I am telling them from my point of view. When I share tips or lessons I am sharing what worked for me. Always do your own research and consult professionals when making important decisions.
