Note: the stats in this article are from Wednesday afternoon, before Chourio had four hits and his 21st homer on Wednesday night.
Jackson Chourio contains multitudes, as they say. When he’s on, he looks like the best position player on the Brewers, by far. He has a knack for rising to the challenge—in 12 postseason games, he is a .341/.362/.682 hitter—and he is, in my qualitative view, the one player on the Brewers who I never think has no chance no matter how good the opposing pitcher is. Simply:
he can do things offensively that nobody else on the team can.
At the same time, he can be frustrating, certainly due in part to the confidence he has in his immense natural ability. There are times when it looks like he’s going to swing, no matter what. While I don’t think Chourio is outmatched physically by any pitcher in the league, he can get out-thought on occasion. Chourio’s splits with runners on base suggest that he tries to do way too much in those situations, to his and the team’s detriment. (More on that in a bit.)
Here’s where I remind you that he’s 22. 22-year-olds get outwitted. It happens. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It could also be concerning if we weren’t seeing tangible signs of improvement from Chourio.
It’s easy to occasionally feel like Chourio’s last two seasons have been, at minimum, mildly disappointing. In his second season, Chourio’s wRC+ dropped seven points (119 to 112) and his WAR was down from 4.0 to 3.0 via FanGraphs and from 3.9 to 2.2 via Baseball Reference. This season, injuries delayed the start of his season, and he hasn’t yet turned into the offense-carrying totem that many people hoped he would be by now.
And yet: those tangible signs of improvement exist. In a general sense, Chourio has ticked up this year. He’s surely going to set a new career high in home runs while playing fewer games than in either of his previous seasons:
- 2024: 148 games, 21 home runs
- 2025: 131g, 21 HR
- 2026: 104g, 20 HR (23 team games remaining)
This has led to an uptick in wRC+, which currently sits at a career-best 124. Chourio continues to be a solid baserunner: the advanced metrics have him about the same as the previous two years, while he is stealing bases at a moderate volume (15) and acceptable rate (75%), both right in line with what he’s done previously (coming into this season Chourio was 43-for-57 in stolen bases, 75.4%).
The most encouraging offensive sign for Chourio is in his plate discipline, something that has been an obvious point of difficulty at times during his young career. Last season, Chourio’s plate discipline was a real problem. His chase rate and walk rate were both in the bottom 12 percent among MLB hitters, which was a tangible drop from his rookie season when he was 26th percentile in chase percentage and 31st percentile in walk rate (6.8%).
This year, we’re seeing, at minimum, a bounceback to 2024 levels. Chourio still chases too much—he is 21st percentile this season—and that’s one of the biggest weak points in his game. But Chourio has worked the walk percentage back to a respectable 8.1%; he’s never going to be Barry Bonds, but for a player with such advanced bat-to-ball skills, you can live with an 8.1% walk rate.
Interestingly, even with the uptick in homers, Chourio’s isolated power (ISO) hasn’t really improved this season—it’s the same as it was last year (.193), which is just a few ticks above his rookie season (.189). He’s hitting more homers, though… so what explains that? Well, Chourio is hitting more homers, but he’s traded off some of his other extra-base hits, most notably the second-most important hits to a player’s slugging percentage: triples. Chourio hit four triples in each of his first two seasons, but doesn’t have any this season. He’s also a little behind his doubles pace from last year, when he hit 35 compared to 21 homers; this year, he has 23 doubles (a full-season pace of 30-31).
To be clear: it’s good to turn some of your doubles into homers. And when you add in the better plate discipline, Chourio’s OPS is up a significant 48 points over last season (and 27 points over his rookie year).
Chourio and the Brewers have also been able to highlight another strength this season: defense. Despite a certain lack of aesthetic beauty, Chourio has generally been a good defensive outfielder since coming to the big leagues. Outs Above Average had him as an excellent right fielder and mediocre left fielder in 2024, and as pretty good in both right and center in 2025 (though with way more attempts in center than right).
This season, Chourio has done far less moving around—91 of his 100 starts in the outfield have come in left. DRS sees him as a clearly good left fielder, and via Outs Above Average, he ranks behind only Chandler Simpson, Cody Bellinger, and Jarren Duran amongst left fielders.
Add all of this together, and Chourio is having his best season (when accounting for his missed games); extrapolate his WAR to the number of plate appearances he had in 2024, and you’d get 4.1 fWAR and 4.3 bWAR. That’s not a huge improvement over the highs he set as a rookie, but it’s an improvement.
There are still things to work on, obviously, and the biggest thing is Chourio’s bizarre splits this season with runners on or off base. Check it out:
- With nobody on base, Chourio is batting .327/.383/.534 for a 154 wRC+
- With men on base, he is hitting .219/.286/.393 for an 81 wRC+
- With runners in scoring position, he’s at .223/.307/.321 for a 68 wRC+
Interestingly, Chourio might be almost too passive with runners in scoring position—his walk rate actually increases from 8.4% with the bases empty to 10.2% with RISP. BABIP is also playing a huge role: Chourio has a sky-high .395 BABIP with no one on, but that drops to .256 with runners on base and .282 with RISP. Most tellingly, his power has evaporated completely with runners in scoring position: his ISO is .207 with bases empty, .174 with runners on, and .098 with runners in scoring position.
How much of that is bad luck? He’s only got 127 plate appearances with RISP plus 69 more with a runner on first, so it’s not like we’re dealing with huge samples here. It certainly seems like there’s a mental side to this; it feels like he’s pressing with runners on. There could be a ‘snake eating its tail’ aspect at play, too: perhaps Chourio knows how bad his numbers are with runners on, so he’s tightening up in those situations.
Figuring out how to get Chourio to relax with runners on base should be one of the team’s biggest goals over the next month—they’re going to need him locked in to make a deep run in the playoffs. He certainly has the ability, and to highlight just how rare Chourio’s accomplishments already are, let’s revisit a list I shared in this week’s Week in Review. When Chourio hit his 20th home run last week, he joined a list of just 16 other players to have three seasons of at least 20 homers before their age-23 season:
- Eight of those 16 players are in the Hall of Fame (Mel Ott, Ted Williams, Eddie Mathews, Mickey Mantle, Al Kaline, Frank Robinson, Orlando Cepeda, and Ken Griffey Jr.)
- One is one of the best players ever but isn’t in the Hall of Fame because of steroids (Alex Rodriguez)
- Five are active players who have Hall of Fame cases ranging from “lock or near lock” (Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Juan Soto) to “we have to at least discuss it” (Giancarlo Stanton, Carlos Correa)
- The remaining two are players whose careers were cut short due to various circumstances (Tony Conigliaro, Bob Horner)
It’s a good list.
