Jackson Chourio is still waiting on the kind of giant leap that turns promise into something even bigger, but the Brewers outfielder is moving in the right direction.
The broad outline is familiar by now. When Chourio is rolling, he looks like the most dangerous position player in Milwaukee by a wide margin.
He brings a postseason edge, too: in 12 playoff games, he’s hit .341/.362/.682. There’s a reason he can feel like the one Brewer who always has a shot, no matter who is on the mound.
He can do things offensively that nobody else on the roster can.
But the same player can also drive you a little crazy. Chourio’s confidence in his own tools can spill over into overaggression, and there are at-bats where it looks like he’s swinging before the pitch has even fully revealed itself.
He’s not physically overmatched by anybody. At times, though, he gets out-thought.
His numbers with runners on base point to a hitter who can try to do too much in those spots, and it’s costing him.
That’s also where the age matters. Chourio is 22.
Twenty-two-year-olds get outwitted. That part is normal.
What makes his case more interesting is that the improvement is real, even if it hasn’t yet produced the breakout many expected.
On the surface, the last two seasons can feel a little underwhelming. In his second year, his wRC+ slipped from 119 to 112, while his WAR fell from 4.0 to 3.0 at FanGraphs and from 3.9 to 2.2 at Baseball Reference. This season started late because of injuries, and he still hasn’t become the offense-driving force plenty of people imagined.
Even so, the trend line is moving up. Chourio is set to top his previous home run totals despite playing fewer games than in either of his first two seasons. That has pushed his wRC+ to a career-best 124.
He’s also continuing to help on the bases. The advanced numbers still have him around the same level as the last two years, and he has 15 steals at a 75% success rate, which matches the pace he set before this season. Coming into the year, he was 43-for-57 on stolen bases, or 75.4%.
The biggest offensive gain is in the one area that has given him trouble at times: plate discipline. Last year, it was a problem. His chase rate and walk rate both sat in the bottom 12 percent of MLB hitters, a clear step back from his rookie season, when he was in the 26th percentile in chase rate and the 31st percentile in walk rate at 6.8%.
This year, at the very least, he’s back to 2024 territory. He still chases too much - his chase rate is in the 21st percentile - but he has lifted his walk rate to 8.1%. He is never going to be Barry Bonds, but with his bat-to-ball ability, that’s a workable number.
The power profile is a little more subtle than the home run total suggests. His isolated power is unchanged from last year at .193, just above the .189 he posted as a rookie.
The difference is that he’s converted some of his extra-base hits into homers. Chourio had four triples in each of his first two seasons, but he has none this year.
He’s also a bit behind last year’s double pace; he had 35 doubles and 21 homers then, and he’s at 23 doubles this season, which projects to about 30 or 31 over a full year.
That tradeoff still works in his favor. More homers are more homers. And with the better walk rate layered in, his OPS is up 48 points from last season and 27 points from his rookie year.
Milwaukee has also gotten more value out of his glove this season. Chourio has been a good defensive outfielder since reaching the majors, even if the style points are sometimes lacking. Outs Above Average graded him as an excellent right fielder and a mediocre left fielder in 2024, then as pretty good in both right and center in 2025, though with far more chances in center than right.
This year, he has mostly stayed put. Ninety-one of his 100 outfield starts have come in left. DRS views him as a clearly good left fielder, and Outs Above Average ranks him behind only Chandler Simpson, Cody Bellinger, and Jarren Duran among left fielders.
Put it all together and this is Chourio’s best season so far when you account for the missed time. If you stretch his WAR to the number of plate appearances he had in 2024, it would land at 4.1 fWAR and 4.3 bWAR. That’s not a massive jump from his rookie peak, but it is still a step forward.
The most glaring issue left is the split that has shown up with runners on base. The numbers are jarring:
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+
There may even be a case that he gets too passive in those situations. His walk rate rises from 8.4% with the bases empty to 10.2% with runners in scoring position.
BABIP tells part of the story, too: he has a .395 BABIP with no one on, then drops to .256 with men on base and .282 with runners in scoring position. The power disappears as well, with his ISO falling from .207 with the bases empty to .174 with runners on and .098 with runners in scoring position.
The sample sizes are not huge - 127 plate appearances with runners in scoring position, plus 69 more with a runner on first - so some of this could be noise. But there does seem to be a mental component.
He looks like a player pressing in those moments. And there may be a feedback loop there: if he knows the numbers are bad with runners on, that can make him even tighter.
Sorting that out should be one of the Brewers’ top priorities over the next month. They’re going to need him sharp if they want a deep playoff run.
The talent is obviously there. And when he 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.
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