Jacob Misiorowski has by far the fewest MLB appearances before making an all-star team. These rookie phenoms were at least close.
Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski has shattered the MLB mark for fewest appearances by a player before getting named to an All-Star Game roster, with his five big-league outings less than half of the 11 by Pittsburgh's Paul Skenes before he was named the All-Star Game starting pitcher last year.
Remember when these all-star rookies took the world by storm and also made appearances so early in their career?
Paul Skenes (2024), 11 games
Skenes, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 Major League Baseball draft, was already high-profile long before he set foot on a big-league mound for the Pirates. On May 11, 2024, he made his big league debut at 21 years old, allowing three earned runs in four innings against the Cubs, but the baseball world recognized a new era was dawning. He threw six hitless innings in his second start, and by the time the All-Star Game rolled around, he had a 1.90 ERA in 11 starts, with the Pirates winning eight of those games.
Not only did he get named to the team, he was announced as starter for the All-Star Game itself, and he worked one inning with a walk and nothing else at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. Skenes went on to win the Rookie of the Year, took third in Cy Young voting and now he's regarded as one of the best pitchers in baseball, if not the best.
Mark Fidrych (1976), 13 games
Before Miz and Skenes, we had "The Bird," a goofy but endearing phenom whose string-bean build creates a natural template for what we've seen with Misiorowski.
The lanky 21-year-old made two big-league appearances with the Tigers before his first start May 15 of that year, when he allowed two hits in a complete-game win as a fill-in starter. The Tigers eventually won 14 of his first 16 starts. He pitched a complete game in a 1-0 loss four days before the All-Star Game, then started the ASG itself, then pitched again three days after (allowing zero runs in 11 innings for a 1-0 victory).
Fidrych threw two innings as the starter in the ASG, allowing two earned runs on four hits and incurring the loss in a 7-1 win for the National League.
Of course, it wasn't just the pitching that made him special; it was the persona.
He would talk to the baseball, pat the dirt on the mound with his bare hand and engaged in various superstitions, like being sure to shake his infielders' hands before they returned to the dugout. He wound up on the cover of both Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone magazines, a unique personality in the world of pro sports.
He finished the year with a league-leading 2.34 ERA and 19-9 record in 250 innings of work, with an astonishing 24 complete games. That earned him Rookie of the Year and a runner-up finish in the Cy Young voting, not to mention MVP votes. He was an all-star again the following year, but injuries dramatically truncated his career, first a knee injury holding him to just 11 starts in 1977 and then a torn rotator cuff keeping him to 16 starts over the next three years. He was out of baseball at 26 years old.
He died tragically in 2009 at age 54 during an accident while performing maintenance under a truck on his farm.
Hideo Nomo (1995), 13 games
Like Fidrych and Skenes before him, Nomo captured the fascination of baseball fans all over the country (and world) when he made his debut with the Dodgers.
Nomo was a trailblazer, finding a loophole in his contract with the Japanese baseball league that allowed him to voluntarily retire and move to another country to play baseball. At age 26, that's what he did, signing with the Dodgers in February of 1995, when many baseball fans needed a jumpstart to rediscover their love for MLB after the 1994 strike.
Nomo got some early work with the farm system; he was called up May 2 to start against San Francisco, when he allowed just one hit in five scoreless innings. He became only the second Japanese player to appear in Major League Baseball and the first since 1965, and more than 200 media members (many from Japan) came to see the first start, while millions of Japanese baseball fans watched the game back home.
His twisting corkscrew "tornado" wind-up created even more of a curiosity factor.
When Greg Maddux suffered a groin injury shortly before the 1995 All-Star Game, it opened a door for Nomo to become the starter in Arlington. Nomo faced six batters, striking out three, allowing a hit (with the runner later caught stealing) and no walks. It was his one and only All-Star Game appearance.
He went on to win Rookie of the Year, finished fourth in Cy Young voting for the first time in back-to-back years and posted a 4.24 ERA over 12 big-league seasons. That included a 1999 season in Milwaukee, when he went 12-8 with a 4.54 ERA for the Brewers.
Dontrelle Willis (2003), 15 games
Like Nomo, Willis's all-arms-and-legs delivery helped add to his mystique, and it didn't hurt that he was carving up the league. The 21-year-old took just one loss in his first 13 starts, all before the all-star break, giving him a 9-1 record and 2.08 ERA in 82 innings.
Unlike others on this list, Willis didn't actually appear in the All-Star Game, and he wasn't named on the initial roster but got added as an injury replacement for Kevin Brown. Willis did appear in the 2005 all-star game, when he allowed two runs on two hits in an inning.
The fun-loving lefty could also swing the bat a little bit, with nine career homers and a .244 average with a .665 OPS. He was part of a World Series championship in 2003 and became the first Marlins 20-game winner in 2005, when he finished runner-up for Cy Young. Like the others on the list, he was also named Rookie of the Year in 2003, beating out Brewers outfielder Scott Podsednik for the honor.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Like Misiorowski, the other rookies to take All-Star Game by storm
Category: Baseball
