Should the Brewers demote Jackson Chourio? Positives and negatives behind top prospect’s early MLB returns

Coming into the spring, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio was considered one of the favorites to win the National League Rookie of the Year award. Chourio had several advantages over his peers. On top of that, he signed a historic extension over the winter, which gave him leverage to earn a spot on the Opening Day roster. He also had a dynamic skill set that hinted at a superstar future. CBS Sports ranked him as the seventh-best prospect, writing the following:

Chourio, the breakout star of the 2022 minor league season, is a dynamic talent. He is the rare player who can launch opposite-field home runs on a regular basis, as well as put infielders in the blender on potential routine pitches. (There was a game in late April against the Angels’ Double-A affiliate where he recorded infield singles to the shortstop and third baseman in consecutive frames.) Some evaluators expressed concerns about the hitting tool generated by his aggressive approach. It’s a fair consideration, but Chourio has earned the benefit of the doubt by staying in the upper minors at such a young age. If all goes well, he will provide the Brewers with their fifth 30/30 season. And the sixth, the seventh, the eighth and so on.

Give those skeptical evaluators some credit: Through Chourio’s first 30 games, it appears they had a point. He entered Monday’s series opener against the Kansas City Royals batting .219/.265/.352 (78 OPS+) with four home runs, 13 RBI and six stolen bases. Reading too much into perceived trends is a dangerous game, but it’s not ideal that Chourio has performed particularly poorly lately. Over the past two weeks, he has sported a .464 OPS and an 11-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 36 plate appearances. He has one extra-base hit during that time.

It’s hard to remember, but development is not always linear. Many of today’s best players struggled early in their big league careers. Several of them required a trip back to the minors so they could make the necessary adjustments. Don’t believe us? Consider this sampling of the season’s best players and how they performed in the first 30 games of their big league careers:

And so on. A rough introduction to The Show doesn’t necessarily portend a disappointing career. What it could be, however, is a sign that the player needs more seasoning in the minors. With that in mind, below we recap the positives and negatives of Chourio’s first 30 games, while also offering a verdict on whether or not a return to the minor leagues could help him.

1. The positive

Give this to Chourio: the secondary value is there. He is a perfect six-for-six in attempted stolen bases. Four of them came on non-fastballs, suggesting he is choosing his positions well.

Chouiro has also been a demon at picking up extra bases throughout the game. He advanced an extra base 67% of the time, well beyond the league average mark of 42%. He’s already scored twice from the first (albeit both times with two outs) and has yet to make an out on the basepaths. Statcast models how often a runner attempts to advance versus expectations based on “the runner’s speed, the outfielder’s throwing arm, the runner’s position on the base paths, and the outfielder’s distance from the ball and the bases.” Chourio advanced 12% more than expected, the 16th highest mark in the majors. Some might say, well, he’s fast, what did you expect? But baserunning is about much more than just speed, and the Brewers should be excited about Chourio’s efficiency given his bulk.

Chourio’s speed also shows up defensively. The Brewers played him on the corners in deference to Blake Perkins. He’s overqualified for any position if you ask us. Here he is heading to center field to track a fly ball; and here he is flying in to catch a line drive on a play that only had a 50% catch probability. Chourio needs to improve his routes from now on, since he had some balls slipping out him he probably should have caught. Overall, though, we think the Brewers should view his defense as an asset rather than a liability at this stage of his career.

Now, let’s move on to the areas where Chourio has struggled.

2. The negative

You probably noticed how we didn’t mention Chourio’s stick at any point in the section above. There are a few reasons for this.

First, Chourio’s aggressive approach was as advertised. He enters Monday ranked in the 13th percentile in pursuit rate and the 23rd percentile in detection rate. He likes to swing the bat and now opponents are making the most of it. Below, we’ve included two heatmaps. The first shows Chourio’s swing rate, the second shows his contact rate. Take a quick look at both:

It’s pretty clear that Chourio looks for high pitches at the plate or in the inner third. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to miss long shots. Want to guess where most opponents are attacking you? You guessed. According to TruMedia, 62% of the fields Chourio saw were located in the outer half. Take a look at your performance based on horizontal location:

Another thing worth noting about Chourio: he doesn’t pull the ball even when he hits it in the air. You would think someone with his type of bat speed would be wearing out left field. He did it in the minors, reliably hitting more than 40% of his balls to left field every step of the way, regardless of sample size. So far in the majors, he has pulled in just 30.6% of his batted balls. That puts him in Steven Kwan territory. No offense to Kwan, an excellent player, but that’s not what you’d expect from Chourio.

To be fair, there are some big hitters who don’t like pulling. Mookie Betts, Yordan Alvarez, Julio Rodríguez and Bobby Witt Jr. are four examples that pop into our heads. Let’s take a look at your pull rates in a different context, highlighting your pull rate based on launch angle and exit velocity:

If you’re familiar with this type of data, it probably looks the way you expect. Betts, Alvarez and Rodríguez make most of their tougher contacts, and at the moment Chourio is not there. Witt shows that It is it is possible to be successful without pulling everything to the pulling side; he has yet to hit a home run this season, and most of his extra-base hits have been to left or right center field. It’s simply not the easiest profile to master.

As proof of that last statement, here are the six lowest pull rates among qualifiers on batted balls with exit velocity of 95 mph or higher, along with their seasonal OPS+:

1. Jonathan India, 16% attraction rate, 83 OPS+

2. Ty France, 17.5%, 97

3. Witt, 19%, 161

4. Nicky Lopez, 20%, 49

5. Tim Anderson, 21.7%, 45

6. Chourio, 22.2%, 78

Chourio certainly has the talent to be another exception, another Witt. But it’s clearly not the easiest path to offensive success.

3. The verdict

Figuring out what would best benefit a player’s long-term development is more of an art than a science. Leaving a player overmatched in the majors for too long could, in theory, shake their confidence in a way they would find difficult to overcome. At the same time, failure is the best teacher of the human experience and some lessons that can only be learned at the most important level.

Even if the Brewers wanted to demote Chourio — and we suspect that will become more of a conversation if he continues to struggle further in May — now would be a less than ideal time to do so. Milwaukee is currently without Garrett Mitchell, Christian Yelich and Joey Wiemer due to various injuries.

That leaves manager Pat Murphy and company with few legitimate alternatives to Chourio. There’s Jake Bauers, who enters Monday with the same OPS+ as Chourio, and then there are a variety of infielders who could be moved to grass. On the minor league front, the Brewers have three healthy position players on the 40-man roster stationed at Triple-A: Owen Miller (himself recently demoted); Vinny Capra (boasting a sub-.700 OPS); and Chris Roller (running a 13-to-1 scratch-to-walk ratio). Forgive our French bulldog, but wow.

Sometimes the only option is the best option by default. When it comes to Chourio and the Brewers, it seems to us that they just need to stay the course and hope that talent wins.