Jackson Chourio is happening

The 20-year-old rookie is starting to deliver on his promise

Jackson Chourio is as promising a prospect as the Brewers have ever had. His raw tools, particularly his speed and quick hands, are enticing enough to draw comparisons to last year’s MVP, Ronald Acuña Jr. In the minor leagues, he showed a tremendous ability to quickly adapt to a new level of pitching, despite being consistently way younger than his competition. After the Brewers signed him to the largest deal ever for a player with no major league experience, there was no financial incentive to keep Chourio off the active roster, and he opened the season in Milwaukee just a couple of weeks after turning 20.

Though there were some early flashes—Chourio went 7-for-20 in his first five games as a major leaguer—he quickly faded as major league pitchers adjusted to his scouting report, and by the end of April he was barely hitting above .200. Between April 12 and June 7, Chourio went 25-for-133 (.188) with only seven walks (.229 OBP) and seven extra-base hits. In April, he really struggled with breaking balls and he struck out more than 32% of the time. His playing time dipped, as manager Pat Murphy rode Blake Perkins’ more consistent approach and Sal Frelick’s more reliable contact.

But even before the results turned around, you could see changes in Chourio. In May, even when he was really struggling to get hits, he cut his strikeouts and was chasing low-and-away fastballs less frequently. He was nodding at good pitches, a sign of his returning confidence and swagger. And while he sometimes looked a little jumpy in the outfield (and famously appeared to annoy Freddy Peralta in late May when he didn’t dive for a ball that appeared catchable), Chourio’s defense was quietly getting excellent ratings via advanced metrics.

If there was any question about whether Chourio was beginning to make improvements, those questions have been answered in the last month. Since June 8, when he went 2-for-4 with a double and a couple of RBI in a game in Detroit, Chourio is hitting .319/.376/.504 with nine doubles, four homers, 21 RBI, and 11 walks in 125 plate appearances. In the last 30 days, Chourio’s .942 OPS is second on the team among players with more than 21 at-bats, behind only Christian Yelich, who put together an MVP-level run prior to the All-Star break. In that same timeframe, Chourio leads the Brewers in doubles, only Rhys Hoskins has more RBI, he has four stolen bases and hasn’t been caught, and perhaps more impressively he has struck out only 11 times in 74 at-bats; eight other Brewers have struck out 11 or more times in the last 30 days, and only four of them have more plate appearances than Chourio.

The Chouraissance peaked this weekend in Minnesota when he went 5-for-9 with three runs scored, a double, a home run (a big-boy homer), five RBI, and two stolen bases in two games. He struck out only once. He made two highlight-reel plays in left field and was the Brewers’ best player as they took a two-game sweep from a playoff contender on the road.

His whole-season numbers are starting to look good, and a lot of that starts with fielding. Via Baseball Reference’s numbers, Chourio is second among all outfielders in Total Zone Runs. He has the second-highest defensive runs above average (DEF) among corner outfielders on Fangraphs, and while he doesn’t rank quite as highly in Statcast’s Outs Above Average stat, he is still tied for 12^th among all outfielders. It’s been hard to see at times this year, given that Chourio doesn’t always look entirely comfortable out there, but he has good defensive instincts and he’s fast as hell, so even though he doesn’t always look as smooth as Blake Perkins or Lorenzo Cain, he’s getting to the balls he needs to get to. Now he’s sprinkling in the highlight-reel stuff. If he stays in the corners, he’s likely to be one of the best defensive corner outfielders for years to come and should be a perennial Gold Glove candidate. If he moves to center field and his skills translate there, he could become a serious defensive weapon.

Chourio has also been a good baserunner—one of the best in baseball, according to Statcast. He is in the 97^th percentile in speed, but he’s putting that speed to work and ranks in the 97^th percentile in baserunning run value as well. He’s stolen 12 bases in 15 tries. We’ve seen his speed on display on two separate plays in which he’s gone from home to home this season.

But the thing that has been most encouraging has been Chourio’s quick, massive offensive improvement. This is not exactly new for him: in the minor leagues in each of the past two seasons, it took Chourio a bit of time to settle into his new, more difficult environment. But each season, he figured it out by the end of July and became a very good hitter, first at Single-A Carolina in 2022 and then at Double-A Biloxi in 2023. He appears to be doing the same thing in 2024. Despite two bad months to start the season, Chourio is back up to a 95 OPS+ and 97 wRC+. He’s basically a league-average hitter, and that’s despite a pretty low 6.8% walk rate. He already has an above-average hard-hit percentage.

All of this has Chourio up to 1.7 WAR via Baseball Reference and 1.6 via Fangraphs; given that a large portion of that value has come in the last month, it looks like he’s going to finish the season over 3 WAR, an incredible accomplishment for a 20-year-old. For reference, there have only been 49 seasons ever in which a position player aged 20 or younger has earned 3 or more WAR in Baseball Reference’s database; if you change that to the expansion era (1961-onward), it’s only happened 24 times.

I think it’s worth sharing this list with you. Here are all the players since 1961 who have had 3-plus WAR in a season at 20 or younger:

Juan Soto (twice)
Bryce Harper (twice)
Ken Griffey Jr. (twice)
Álex Rodríguez
Mike Trout
Ronald Acuña Jr.
Carlos Correa
Tony Conigliaro
Fernando Tatis Jr.
Jason Heyward
Andruw Jones
Adrián Beltré
Johnny Bench
Manny Machado
Joe Torre
Claudell Washington
Butch Wynegar
Roberto Alomar
Wander Franco (eek)
Elvis Andrus
Édgar Rentería

That’s an astonishing list. Four of those players are in the Hall of Fame as players (Griffey, Beltré, Bench, Alomar). Torre, who is in as a manager, has a legitimate case as a player. Jones could be in the Hall next year. Rodríguez, for all his faults, is one of the greatest players ever. Trout, Soto, and Harper are all almost certainly headed to Cooperstown, and Machado and Correa will have solid cases. Acuña will be on that path if he can stay healthy. Tatis Jr. has Hall of Fame talent. Franco… well, he also has Hall of Fame talent. That leaves just Conigliaro, Heyward, Washington, Wynegar, Andrus, and Rentería, all of whom were/are very good major-league players.

I’m not trying to put Chourio in a Hall of Fame conversation. I’m merely pointing out that when you are as good as Chourio has been since the beginning of June when you are as young as Chourio is, big things are in store. Aside from Conigliaro, who got MVP votes in his age-20 and age-21 seasons and made the All-Star team as a 22-year-old before injuries ruined his career, every single player here who is currently over 25 years old earned over 30 WAR in their careers except Wynegar, a catcher, who had 26.5 (which is the 55^th-highest total in baseball history at that position), and Washington, who had a 17-year career and almost 2,000 hits. If he stays healthy, history suggests that Chourio will have an excellent career.

Chourio became the No. 2 prospect in all of baseball because of his tools, his projectability, and the legitimate results he got at an extremely young age. Those tools and results are now translating to the major league level, and the guy can’t buy his first beer until halfway through spring training next year. He is signed up to be a Milwaukee Brewer until 2034, which feels like a science fiction year. We should be excited.