Tucked away in Neosho, Missouri, is a small college called Crowder College. Its facilities are functional, its enrollment is modest, and it’s far from the shiny practice facilities of Oklahoma State or LSU. It doesn’t exactly shout “future MLB record-breaker.” However, if you examine what transpired within that program between 2021 and 2022, you begin to grasp a crucial aspect of how Jacob Misiorowski developed into the pitcher he is today. It wasn’t a clean path. It wasn’t anticipated. However, it might have been just what he needed.
Misiorowski was raised in the Kansas City suburb of Grain Valley, Missouri, where Friday nights meant high school baseball and aspirations that seemed truly attainable. His 9-2 record with a 1.48 ERA and All-State honors by his junior year in 2019 are the kind of stats that make scouts sit up straighter in folding chairs behind chain-link fences. Representatives from the Brewers, Rays, and Rockies watched a teenage boy throw a curveball that didn’t quite belong to someone his age during bullpen sessions that December.
His senior season was lost when COVID struck. Anyone who hasn’t experienced it will find it difficult to comprehend that specific type of loss—not just a few missed games, but the erasure of an entire chapter. Regardless of talent, the majority of high school students were essentially shut out of the 2020 MLB draft when it was reduced to five rounds. Misiorowski pledged allegiance to Oklahoma State. After that, he decided to enroll at Crowder College. He might not have known why at the time.
On the surface, what followed appeared to be more misfortune. As a rookie for the Crowder in 2021, he made just two appearances before his season was cut short by a torn meniscus. Even though his body wasn’t cooperating, he seemed to believe in himself because he had committed to transfer to LSU. Experiences like missing junior college games due to a knee injury or seeing your timeline go longer than anticipated can either break a person or make them stronger. It is evident which way Misiorowski’s performance ultimately went.
In 2022, his second season at Crowder was truly remarkable. A 10-0 record with fifteen starts. 2.72 ERA. 76 innings and an astounding 136 strikeouts. Even though those numbers seem almost cartoonish, they still exist. He averaged 99.8 miles per hour and recorded the eight fastest pitches ever by the time he made an appearance at the MLB Combine. One of the most explosive arms in amateur baseball had been quietly developing at a junior college in southwest Missouri, far from the national spotlight. That has an almost cinematic quality, even though the reality was probably just routine, unglamorous work on a mound that no one was really interested in.
In the 2022 draft, the Brewers selected him 63rd overall and paid $2.35 million, more than twice the slot value. When everyone realized what Crowder had been sitting on, the industry recalibrated, as evidenced by that premium.
According to Misiorowski, those years were “the grind I needed.” Despite its simplicity, this phrase has significant meaning. None of these things were part of the original plan: the injury, the smaller stage, and the deviation from the intended course. However, at its best, junior college baseball requires a level of toughness that larger programs occasionally shield players from. It’s still unclear if that environment actually shaped him or if it just made what was already there more apparent. Most likely both.
The outcome is clear. The young man from Crowder is now pitching on Opening Day for a team with genuine postseason hopes, throwing the fastest pitches in MLB history by a starting pitcher, and finishing Maddux games with 15 strikeouts. Neosho is where it all began. It seems important to keep that in mind.
