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“Velocity, velocity, velocity,” Hader said.

The Brewers’ closer, Trevor Megill, who leads that group with an average four-seam fastball of 99.0 mph, put names to the speed when asked Monday at the start of All-Star week in Atlanta. Aaron Ashby is “back into the mix” at 97-98 mph, he said. Jared Koenig hit 99 mph “the other day,” Nick Means is “back throwing 98 mph again,” and Abner Uribe “throws 102, 103.” And that’s just what the Brewers’ bullpen is throwing at opponents.

In one of the most revealing decisions of the direction baseball’s speed game is going — and going fast — Brewers’ rookie Jacob Misiorowski was commissioner Rob Manfred’s late addition to the National League’s All-Star Game roster. He leapfrogged other deserving pitchers, several of them veterans, despite making his big-league debut only four weeks earlier against the Cardinals. His inning in the All-Star Game was his sixth appearance as a Brewer in the regular season, and it’s clear the choice was influenced by a number greater than his five starts.

It’s right there on the radar: 103 mph.

“On that kind of note, it seems like every series you play a team and they’ve got a reliever who you’ve never heard of who sits 99 mph to 100 mph and has a wipeout off-speed pitch, and it’s just that over and over and over again,” said Athletics slugger Brent Rooker when I asked how fitting it was that the NL could just pluck a last-minute, 103-mph fastball out of the air for its roster. “Eventually, those are the guys who become the relievers in the All-Star Game. Teams are just cycling through guys and there is so much depth in terms of the backend of bullpens and so much stuff. I don’t think it’s ever been tougher to hit.”

In Tuesday’s All-Star Game at Atlanta’s Truist Park, there were 21 pitches that left fingertips at 100 mph or swifter. The seven fastest came from Misiorowski’s hand.

The Midsummer Classic was a showcase of the game’s increasing velocity and an extreme example of how the Cardinals must catch up. The amateur draft at the start of the week was a peek into their solution.

They have a need — a need for speed.

“That’s just the evolution of the game,” Hall of Fame-bound and Dodgers lefty Clayton Kershaw said in the NL’s clubhouse before Tuesday’s game. “I think everybody is throwing harder with better breaking balls, max-effort, and that’s not changing any time soon.”

“Yeah, velocity is great,” said Houston starter Hunter Brown, who has a 2.43 ERA and is third in American League with 137 strikeouts. “We’re seeing some crazy numbers as guys are just throwing harder and harder. I think it’s clear that the harder you throw, the better results that you’ll get. It’s always been chased after. It gives you an opportunity to have some leeway in the strike zone.”

Added his teammate Hader: “That’s why velocity is such a key part of the game right now — you can get a guy who throws 99 mph and throws it middle-middle and it might not go middle-middle but it gives him the opportunity to still get a guy out.”

The average four-seam fastball’s speed has steadily climbed in recent years, from 91.9 mph in 2008, the first year of reliable data, to 94.4 mph this season. There were 170 pitches in this past week’s All-Star Game that were faster than the major-league average. Twenty-two of the 35 pitchers on the rosters for the game averaged faster than 95 mph on their fastball.

The Cardinals, likewise, have revved-up their average velocity in recent years. After back-to-back seasons ranking sixth-slowest — if that’s the appropriate word — in average team fastball speed, the Cardinals are up to 16th this season, at 94.3 mph. They, however, have thrown the fewest four-seam fastballs in the majors — by more than 100. Their whiff-rate on four-seam fastballs ranks 29th, at 17.3%, and they have the seventh-lowest whiff rate against all fastballs, at 18.5%. That contributes to the lowest strikeout rate (7.38 strikeouts-per-nine) in the majors at sea level, ranking behind only the team the Cardinals visit this week — the Rockies.

The Cardinals’ bullpen is the team’s booster rocket, ranking among the leaders in average fastball speed. Five relievers average faster than 95 mph, paced by closer Ryan Helsley’s 99.0 mph and Riley O’Brien’s 98.2 mph.

A majority of the Cardinals’ rotation pitches to contact — a classic formula since the days of Dave Duncan meant to take advantage of superb defense. But as the game speeds up for rivals, the drawback becomes more prominent. Manager Oliver Marmol mentioned it to reporters again Friday night in Arizona as groundball-getter Andre Pallante allowed six runs in 4 2/3 innings of a 7-3 loss: “When it’s at people, (he) has a good outing. That’s what you have to live and die with when you have guys in the rotation that pitch to contact.”

“We’ve talked about this enough, right?” The manager said.

It cannot be talked about enough because fewer balls in play is increasingly the game — even a few seasons after Major League Baseball changed rules to spur more balls in play. Quick outs, pitch efficiency, and getting the defense involved can still win games, but with less emphasis on innings from starters there is more on stuff and whiffs.

Rooker put it best during our conversation in the AL clubhouse Tuesday.

“I think teams have discovered the most-efficient way to prevent runs from scoring is to not let anyone hit the ball,” he said. “That is going to be the goal. In terms of the game becoming optimized and teams trying to do things as efficiently as possible, from a pitching perspective, if they don’t put the ball in play, it’s way tougher to score. That goal is obvious. Chase those whiffs. Get those strikeouts.”

That sounds like the Cardinals’ game plan for the draft.

With the fifth overall pick, the Cardinals selected Tennessee lefty Liam Doyle and his 101-mph fastball, one assistant general manager Randy Flores called an “outlier” and “rare” outside of the top picks. Doyle set Vols strikeout records and was among NCAA leaders in strikeout rates. He was the headliner of a draft class that includes a dozen pitchers. The second pitcher taken by the Cardinals, Doyle’s Vols teammate Tanner Franklin, touches 102 mph on his fastball. Scouting reports for the first five pitchers drafted by the Cardinals mention a fastball that touches 98 mph or faster. Their 13th-round pick Jake Shelagowski, a catcher turned closer, reportedly has a fastball that reaches 100 mph.

Also consider the phrases Baseball America used to describe the Cardinals’ picks entering the draft: Doyle has an “easy plus pitch on velocity alone,” Franklin carries a “big fastball,” Ethan Young sports a “power arsenal,” and Payton Graham is “power-armed.”

“It’s coming. The velocity is coming,” said Kyle Schwarber, the Phillies’ designated hitter a few hours before winning the All-Star Game’s MVP honor. “It seems like, on average, every time you can get into that bullpen it’s pretty much 100-mph arms coming out there at you. Now it feels like that high four-seamer turned into 98 mph with a big, hard curveball and now you’re coming back to 99 with power sink and power sweeper and different sliders.”

Before a recent national broadcast game against the Padres, Schwarber spoke about this spiking velocity with former Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright, part of FOX Sports’ broadcast group. They discussed how a decade ago the Cardinals’ rotation Schwarber’s Cubs faced in the postseason was in the low-90s teasing contact and capitalizing on one of the best defensive clubs of the era. (“Painting and moving the ball around,” Schwarber called it.) Carlos Martinez was the outlier, the lightning bolt with a 98-mph sinker.

So far this season, there are 13 pitchers in the majors who have thrown more than 100 fastballs and average faster than 99 mph.

Two starters in the National League Central, Cincinnati’s Hunter Greene and Milwaukee’s Misiorowski, average 99.3 mph on their fastballs and hit triple-digits in late innings. The NL Central also has Pittsburgh phenom Paul Skenes, the NL’s starter for back-to-back All-Star games, and he averages 98.2 mph on his four-seam, 97.7 mph on his sinker, and 93.7 mph on a split-finger power pitch that needed a new name, “the splinker.”

All three blowtorch starters are under team control through at least 2029.

That’s what Cardinals hitters have to look forward to.

“I think guys are throwing harder than ever and I think guys are throwing consistently harder than ever,” Cardinals’ All-Star Brendan Donovan said.

There is a larger conversation enveloping baseball about the cost of accelerating the game’s velocity. Pitcher injuries are on the rise, and a study by MLB released this past offseason cited max-effort velocity-chasing as a contributor. Pitchers are encouraged to throw harder and harder, younger and younger. Or as Hader, who threw 87 mph before gaining velo as a pro, put it: “It’s like if you’re not throwing 95-plus, you’re not getting drafted.” Velocity can also compensate for command. A pitcher can be less fine, less accurate, less on the edges, and perhaps take less time to develop without needing that feel. Thus, they move (ahem) faster to the majors.

All of those factors are in play as teams are heat-seeking more whiffs.

And, as a result, pitchers are seeking more heat.

“I’m at 103 mph right now, and we’ll see where it goes,” Misiorowski said.

“We keep seeing it grow and grow and guys throwing harder and harder, so why not?” Brown told me when I asked if there was an upper limit. “I’m chasing 200.”