Chourio had a slow start but ended up as one of the best rookies in the league
We’re continuing our rankings of the Brewers’ 10 most valuable players in 2024 with outfielder Jackson Chourio. Chourio finished the season with 3.8 bWAR and 3.9 fWAR, both good for third on the team.
Chourio had one of the better rookie seasons among Brewers in recent memory in 2024, and that’s with a really slow start that took him into June with a .210/.254/.327 batting line, five homers, 16 RBIs, 20 runs, seven steals, and a 47:10 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
Despite that start, Chourio still managed to finish the year hitting .275/.327/.464 (117 OPS+) with 21 homers, 79 RBIs, 80 runs, 22 steals, and a 121:39 strikeout-to-walk ratio (for those of you who hate math, that’s a 74:29 ratio after June 1). At 20 years, Chourio also became the youngest player in MLB history with a 20-20 season, barely beating out Mike Trout, who achieved the feat on his 21st birthday.
All of that was good enough for a third-place finish in a deep NL Rookie of the Year race, and he also picked up one 10th place vote in the MVP race, joining William Contreras and Willy Adames as the Brewers’ three vote-getters.
While Chourio’s outfield defense may not have looked pretty at times, he also graded out as an above-average defender, making zero errors with a league-high 13 total zone fielding runs above average along with nine defensive runs saved in right field, per Baseball Reference.
His Baseball Savant page also features a lot of red, as he ranked in the 91st percentile in batting run value, the 98th percentile in baserunning run value, and the 85th percentile in fielding run value.
He ranked in the 86th percentile with a .274 xBA and in the 73rd percentile with a 44.9% hard-hit rate. Echoing the Baseball Reference numbers, he finished five outs above average in the outfield, good for the 89th percentile. His spring speed of 29.7 mph put him at the 97th percentile.
All in all, it was a successful rookie campaign for Chourio, especially considering the amount of pressure he was under following his huge eight-year, $82 million contract, which at this (way too early) point looks like a steal. We’ll see how his sophomore season goes at age 21 in 2025.
We’ll continue our rankings of the 10 most valuable Brewers each Monday and Wednesday into early December. Come back on Monday to see who we have at No. 2.