Is This Jackson Chourio's Superstar Corner-Turn?

Jackson Chourio has long been talked about as a potential MVP candidate. We've seen the fast hands, the impressive swing speed and surprising contact rates, but we haven't always seen the results to back up the talent that he possesses. Chourio only turned 22 this March, an important part of this equation, but even so, we'd seen some short glimpses of what Chourio is capable of—and then some more mediocre performance.

In his first two seasons, Chourio recorded a wRC+ of 118 and 111 in 2024 and 2025, respectively, striking out a little over 20% of the time and accumulating 6.8 WAR over that period. That's a very valuable run, and one that I don't mean to demean at all, especially for someone of Chourio's age.

That being said, his subpar walk rate in each season highlights why Chourio hadn't ascended to the heights he was capable of in his first two seasons. Across both 2024 and 2025, the Brewers phenom was chasing pitches outside the strike zone at a 34.5% clip, on the edge of the worst quintile in baseball. In doing so, he was putting bat to ball on pitches that he couldn't enact much impact on, and also whiffing a lot. Putting yourself in a good hitter's count is key for any batter, and when you do so, you force pitchers into your wheelhouse. By taking more pitches outside the strike zone, Chourio can bring pitchers back into the zone. Then he can unleash.

After some of his worst swing decisions in May (something I wrote about three weeks ago), Chourio has completely flipped the switch, and it's directly correlated to his performance so far this month. Have a look at his in-zone swing rate and his chase rate so far in each of the two months, and how that's tied to a variety of batted-ball quality metrics:

Chourio is striking out less, and perhaps most importantly, he's finding better launch angles on his batted balls. Hitting the ball hard and into the ground will only get you so far as a hitter, but the screaming line drives have become a real feature of his performance thus far in June. 

The change in his plate discipline is allowing him to be aggressive at anything inside the strike zone early in the count, letting his bat fly and looking to do damage to the pull side, while being more secure in the knowledge that he can work his way back into the count later on if he gets down to two strikes. 

The big change so far this year is that Chourio is actively hunting fastballs. If you listened to Jason Wang last night on our Sunday live podcast, you'd know this hasn't always been an area of strength for the young star. In 2025, Chourio struggled at times to really impact fastballs.

Against sinkers and four-seamer in 2025, he had a -12 run value (-6 for each pitch). With an expected slugging of just .378 in 2025 against four-seam fastballs, he wasn't impacting the pitch seen most often across major-league baseball. Compare that to 2026, in which he has a +5 run value against four-seamers and sinkers thus far, doing more damage (.471 expected slugging) against four-seamers and marmalising sinkers with a 71% hard hit rate. That marks a real change for Chourio.

If we look at his timings, there's quite a clear difference in where exactly Chourio is hitting these fastballs:

The graph on the left shows if the pitchers are able to get Chourio down on the end of the bat or get in on his hands to stay off his barrel. In 2025, he was catching a lot of fastballs off the end of the bat, but this year, he's centered the ball on his barrel much better, which is the key to generating exit velocity. (He's also slightly better at being on time and lining up the fastball, possibly because he's hunting them, but let's stay with the flail element for now.)

Why would a hitter be hitting a ball off the toe of the bat? One of the main causes would be if Chourio was trying to pull pitches on the outer third of the plate, The bat would be angled toward the pull side on a pitch that just shouldn't be taken in that direction—not for someone with Chourio's stance and set-up, and someone who doesn't need to pull the ball to access his power. The other is by being late to the ball, and again, the tilt of the bat means the ball comes off the end of the bat rather than the barrel. In expertly drawn schematics from my trained hand, these are the same lengths of lines at different angles, but note the difference in where the ball is touching said lines:

So, being late or early can influence where a hitter is being tied up or flailing, and so can the types of pitches at which he's swinging. A hitter is more likely to flail at a pitch on the outer third of the plate than one on the inner third, and Chourio has been marginally more selective in swinging at those outer-third fastballs in 2026, especially those lower down in the strike zone (which require a longer bat path to reach). He's also been increasingly aggressive against fastballs on the inner third of the plate. Those locations might tie up a number of hitters, but Chourio's hands allow him to get to those pitches with aplomb, and it's helping him find the center of the bat more often.

On average, Chourio is hitting fastball variants almost 5 mph harder in 2026 than he did in 2025, a massive leap forward. He's averaging over 95 mph in exit velocity against these pitches, without sacrificing his contact skills. So does that mean he's been more susceptible to breaking balls?

Well, the answer is slightly nuanced. Better swing decisions are helping Chourio force pitchers to throw those breaking pitches inside the strike zone more often, and that definitely helps. He also appears to be reading the pitch out of the hand well, because he's been on time with his swing more often this year than he was in 2025. From May to June, his miss distance on breaking pitches is lower, he's generating fewer "flawed swings" (where he's off in all three dimensions), and overall, he's whiffing a lot less while finding better launch angles on the breaking balls he's hit. As a result, he's got a .371 expected batting average against breaking pitches this month.

So between the fastball and the breaking ball, there's been no let-up from Chourio. He's not over-committing one way or the other, and is becoming about as pure a total hitter as one can get. There will be more thorny adjustments to come. We'll see if pitchers try to pitch around him more now; we saw him intentionally walked multiple times last week.

Chourio has a 195 wRC+ so far in June, with a 1.091 OPS. He's produced 1.3 fWAR in the last three weeks alone. The plate discipline is fueling all of this change, and the question now becomes whether he can sustain this for longer than a three-week period. If so, the MVP version of Jackson Chourio is leaving the station. Get on board, Milwaukee.