MILWAUKEE (AP) — Jacob Misiorowski has been reaching new milestones for velocity just about every time he pitches, which might explain the Milwaukee Brewers right-hander's lack of surprise over his latest achievement.
Misiorowski threw 57 pitches of at least 100 mph — the most by any individual in a single game since pitch tracking began in 2008 — while getting 12 strikeouts to match his career high Monday in a 5-1 win against the St. Louis Cardinals.
“That's what I do,” Misiorowski said. “I throw hard.”
The previous record for 100-mph pitches in a single game was 47 by Cincinnati’s Hunter Greene against St. Louis on Sept. 17, 2022.
Misiorowski reached 101 mph on 40 of his 96 pitches. He got to 102 mph on 22 pitches and had nine of at least 103. His top velocity was 103.4 mph, which he reached three times.
Nine of his strikeouts came on pitches that reached 100 mph, tying the single-game record that Greene set in that 2022 game against St. Louis.
Misiorowski (5-2) allowed two hits and one walk in his seven-inning stint while improving his ERA to 1.83.
“Magnificent,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “One of the best performances I've seen in a long time.”
Yet it's not all that different from all of the 24-year-old's other recent efforts.
In five starts this month, Misiorowski has allowed just one run and 11 hits while striking out 49 and walking just six batters over 31 1/3 innings. When the Cardinals scored their lone run in the sixth inning, it snapped Misiorowski's streak of consecutive scoreless innings at 29 1/3.
That represented the third-longest streak of shutout innings in Brewers history. Teddy Higuera had 32 straight scoreless innings in 1987 and Freddy Peralta had 30 last year.
Misiorowski hasn't allowed an extra-base hit in six straight starts since giving up a double to Miami's Kyle Stowers on April 19.
“For him, I think the biggest thing is throwing strikes, and he's doing that,” Brewers first baseman Andrew Vaughn said. “That fastball's probably the best in the game. It's awesome to watch.”
Indeed, Misiorowski's control is one of the biggest ways in which he has improved since going 5-3 with a 4.36 ERA as a rookie last season.
Misiorowski had 87 strikeouts and 31 walks in 66 innings last year. This season, he's walked 19 in 64 innings while getting a major-league-leading 100 strikeouts.
He started Monday's game by walking JJ Wetherholt on a 3-2 pitch inside before retiring the next 15 batters he faced. The Cardinals didn't get a hit until Pedro Pagés delivered a bloop single to lead off the sixth.
Misiorowski ended up allowing a run in the sixth, then he came back out in the seventh and retired the side in order. Misiorowski ended his day with a strikeout of Masyn Winn in which six of the seven pitches he threw exceeded 100 mph.
“It was just one of those things you go in the dugout, they tell you the inning before, ‘Hey, this is it. Go get it,’ ” Misiorowski said. “And kind of trust that the bullpen's going to have your back behind you.”
Misiorowski also has greater endurance from the conditioning work he did in the offseason. Murphy noted that it's about more than just arm strength.
“You can tell all those young pitchers out there, you have to have a lower half,” Murphy said. “He’s put together a great lower half.”
Misiorowski said that working on his lower half was a focus in the offseason. The results are apparent in the way he's working deeper into games while maintaining his status as the hardest-throwing starting pitcher in the majors.
According to MLB.com, Misiorowski has thrown 22 career pitches of at least 103 mph, including in the postseason. No other starting pitcher has thrown more than two pitches of 103 mph or higher during the pitch tracking era.
No wonder Misiorowski said he wasn't taken aback Monday when each of his first six pitches went at least 103 mph.
“I feel like that’s how it should be every day," Misiorowski said. “I feel like that’s where I’m at. I feel like that’s just my normal.”
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Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Jacob Misiorowski throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals Monday, May 25, 2026, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf)
Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Jacob Misiorowski throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals Monday, May 25, 2026, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf)
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called Monday for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to war.
“Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), Leo’s first encyclical, has been eagerly awaited ever since history’s first U.S.-born pope announced days after his election that he considered AI to be the biggest challenge facing humanity today.
In the text, Leo denounced the “culture of power” driving the AI race, especially in developing ever more sophisticated methods of remote warfare. He declared that it was “not permissible” to entrust irreversible, lethal decisions to AI systems, setting up another flash point between the American pope and the Trump administration, which has worked aggressively to deregulate AI development.
“Artificial Intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death,″ the pope told a special Vatican presentation of the encyclical, one of the most authoritative types of teaching documents a pope can issue.
Experts in the tech industry, academia and Catholic morality said the document will likely become a benchmark in the debate over AI, a point of reference for policymakers, researchers and ordinary folk alike. It comes as the near-daily developments in the technology trigger concerns over AI replacing human jobs and even human intelligence.
Taylor Black, a Microsoft AI executive and director of Catholic University of America’s AI institute, said the document would prompt people “at the forefront of these tools” to ask questions such as “What does it mean to be human?”
The Vatican launch also included remarks by the co-founder of Anthropic, which is currently locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over access to its AI technology. The Vatican decided to involve Anthropic as part of its decade-long effort to engage Silicon Valley in dialogue over the human cost of AI.
And yet in his text, Leo repeatedly blasted the concentration of power and data in the hands of so few people in the private sector as a danger, especially to children and the most vulnerable, and called for external regulation of their work.
“It is not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract; robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required,” he wrote. “A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.”
Leo appealed to AI developers and political leaders responsible for regulating them to slow down and reflect on what they are doing. He urged them to use ethical and spiritual guidelines to make the choice to work not for their own profit or power, but the betterment of humanity.
AI competitors OpenAI and Anthropic are the second- and third-most valuable U.S. private companies, each valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, more than the GDP of many nations. Both companies are heading toward near-trillion dollar IPOs.
Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah welcomed Leo's criticism and concern. He said such external checks were fundamental to the technology “going well” for humankind since there is so much at stake — “a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at a very large scale.”
“We need more of the world — religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments — to do what His Holiness has done here: to take this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better direction,” Olah said. “We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.”
In a methodical text, the math major pope traced the history of the Catholic Church’s social teaching and applied its core concepts — justice, solidarity, the dignity of work and the universal destination of resources — to the digital revolution.
“I am convinced that this will prove to be a defining document for our era, a profound and prophetic document,” said Paolo Carozza, law professor at Notre Dame Law School and chair of the Meta Oversight Board.
“Pope Leo is offering a clear, comprehensive, and coherent voice urging us to take responsibility for constructing a world in which technology will serve humans rather than degrade them,” he said.
In its strongest chapters, Leo denounced how AI had helped accelerate the “normalization of war” by desensitizing people to its cost. He didn’t name specific conflicts, but cited “opposing imperialisms, between powers that wish to preserve their supremacy, and those that aspire to seize that supremacy.”
He demanded transparency and accountability by AI developers so that the chain of decision-making command in ordering strikes with AI weaponry is always known. He declared that the Catholic Church’s “just war” theory, which provides specific criteria for when force can be justified, was now “outdated” given the technological advances of warfare.
Leo signed the text May 15, the 135th anniversary of the publication of “Rerum Novarum” (Of New Things), the most important teaching document of Leo’s hero and namesake, Pope Leo XIII. That document addressed workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers owed workers as the Industrial Revolution was underway.
It became the foundation of modern Catholic social thought, and the current pope cited it at the start of his pontificate in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes poses the same existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed over a century ago. “Magnifica Humanitas” thus becomes the latest chapter in a century-long history of popes adapting “Rerum Novarum” to the social questions of their times, often dwelling on the dignity of work for human flourishing.
AI is evoking both existential fears and utopian vision amid an intensifying debate on whether it will become a catalyst that enriches humanity or a technological toxin that dulls human intelligence while wiping out millions of high-paying jobs.
“The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good,” Leo wrote.
Leo extended his concern for upholding human dignity in labor to issue the first-ever papal apology for the Holy See’s own role in legitimizing slavery by giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels.”
Vatican officials declined to say who contributed to Leo’s encyclical. But Vatican and church officials have been engaged in a dialogue with Silicon Valley tech firms for a decade.
The decision to include Anthropic at the Vatican launch was criticized by some who considered it a papal stamp of approval of the AI firm, which is currently suing the Trump administration after it ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology for its refusal to allow the U.S. military unrestricted use of it.
Brian Boyd, U.S. faith liaison for the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, read the inclusion of Anthropic’s co-founder Olah as a recognition of its prominence in the field and as similar to a papal audience with a head of state: not an endorsement.
Anthropic is an “enormous corporation that is taking onto itself an enormous risk and responsibility,” Boyd said, adding that the company has “demonstrated genuine goodwill and integrity and interest in dialogue.”
Winfield reported from Middletown, Connecticut, and Huamani reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Kelvin Chan in London and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Pope Leo XIV, left, attends the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV, left, attends the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah speaks during the presentation of Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV attends the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV, left, greets Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah during the presentation of the Pope's first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV waves to faithful at the end of the Pentecost Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
