Jackson Chourio Missed an Opportunity for a Big Play Tuesday Night. Can He Make the Adjustment Next Time?

So much of outfield defense is just about tools—speed, throwing arm, and a certain ability to make the last-second shift or turn to catch a ball on the run or the dive—that the skill of it often gets lost. A great outfield technician is a thing of beauty, and thus, a joy forever. Blake Perkins's footwork when preparing for a catch-and-throw, and the way he creates flat angles to the wall when he goes to rob home runs. Sal Frelick's ferocious but click-perfect charge and load for a throw, as displayed Tuesday night when he threw out a Rangers runner trying to go first-to-third on a single to right. These are lots of fun for baseball nerds. On balance, though, a great athlete has time to make up for small deficiencies in route or footwork or technique, on most outfield plays. The game in the grass is more forgiving than the one played on the dirt.

Jackson Chourio is an excellent example. In his two years as a big-league outfielder, he's virtually never shown the technical excellence characteristic of Perkins and Frelick's play in the outfield. Even Isaac Collins (seven years Chourio's senior and a utility man by trade) has gone out to left field this year and shown a better knack for reading the ball, reacting quickly and making a direct play on the ball than Chourio has. Yet, Chourio's numbers as a defensive outfielder are good. He makes up for most of his imperfections, using the time the ball spends navigating the atmosphere and negotiating a controlled descent with gravity to run underneath it—even if he first broke the wrong way, or took an extra beat to break at all.

Occasionally, though, the game gives no quarter. Chourio has made some infamous misplays, from the one in left field in last year's Wild Card Series to the ball he played into a game-changing double in Cleveland back in May. In fact, let's start in that very series—but talk about a different ball he also misplayed. On a sinking line drive by Guardians first baseman Kyle Manzardo, Chourio did this.

That was a bad mistake. Chourio was only about a month and a half into playing center in the majors at that point, but one of the first things you have to learn to play there (as opposed to left or right) is the extra layer of danger in letting a ball get by you. You do want to charge flares like this one aggressively, but you have to have a plan to keep it in front of you, because there's so much vacant real estate behind you if you miss.

Worse, though, that ball appears to have been the origin story of Chourio's alter-ego, as a center fielder: Chicken-Man. Ok, that's way too mean. But ever since that painful gaffe, he's been gunshy about coming in hard on balls like Manzardo's hit. Here he is just a week after that, being very conservative on a ball hit to him on a similar trajectory.

You can hear the slight disappointment in Jeff Levering's voice. Chourio, starting from a deep initial position and shaded heavily toward right-center, still had time to come get this ball. Off the bat, he broke the correct way, but just as he seemed to be getting up to speed, he broke it right back down. Specifically, he seemed comfortable with the lateral movement he needed, but not with the inward charge required to reach the ball. He pulled up and played it on a hop, instead.

It's been a pattern, ever since. Here's Chourio in early July, letting Isaac Collins call him off on a ball that should belong to the center fielder, resulting in a bloop double.

Here he is in his second game after returning from his hamstring strain, August 31 in Toronto, calling a last-second audible on an effort to chase down a hooking liner from Ernie Clement.

Chourio's greatest strength as an outfielder has always been moving laterally. Installed in center this season, he's been tremendous at stopping the gaps, showing excellent range to either side. His defensive positioning is designed to maximize the value of this strength. Here's where he sets up against lefty batters, arrayed with the average positioning against lefties for the rest of the league's center fielders. As you can see, that very deep, very shaded toward right position he occupied in the clips featuring lefties above is very much the norm.

The hardest-hit, most potentially dangerous batted balls (and toughest to deal with) for a center fielder will be the ones driven over their heads or into the gap on the hitter's pull side. By setting up where he does, Chourio gives himself a chance to go make huge catches in those areas. He does the same thing against right-handed batters.

That makes it possible for him to come up with plays like this.

When batters hit long drives into the gap to the opposite field, it's nearly always at a launch angle over 30° and with backspin, so Chourio has time to run under the ball even though he's starting farther from the play than a typical center fielder might. It all works out nicely, when it comes to taking away extra-base hits.

Playing where he does, however, makes plays like the others we've looked at here harder. Chourio has to come in on the ball hard to get to them, and he's not comfortable doing it. That reared its head yet again Tuesday night in Texas. After a game-tying home run by Michael Helman, Josh Smith was up for the Rangers, and he hit a liner to center that could have been the second out of the frame.

Chourio got a good initial break on this ball. Here's the first frame after the broadcast feed flipped from the center-field angle to showing us the whole field.

He drew a bead on it quite well, too, lining himself up with the ball and moving quickly toward it at first. Here's another screenshot, after he's made about five steps toward the ball while it floats out toward him.

The good times won't last, though. Here's the last moment when Chourio had a chance to catch this ball.

In fact, though, he's already given up the ghost. Starting with the turn of his hips you can see in that final screenshot, he was already retreating, to catch the ball on a comfortable bounce. Two or three times in the pursuit of this ball, he corrected his route to take him even more toward left field, and away from the charge toward the shortstop position that would have been required to make the play.

There are worse sins than being a conservative outfielder on balls hit like these. Chourio does enough things well to look past little things like this most of the time. However, the playoffs (where little things get big in a hurry) are right around the corner. Chourio has a particularly negative rating on shallow balls in center field this year, according to Sports Info Solutions:

• Shallow: -3 Plays Saved
• Medium: -1
• Deep: -1

The Rangers, making a furious push toward the playoffs at the last minute in what has been a frustrating season for them, showed the Brewers how costly missed chances to make plays and nip rallies in the bud can be, scoring twice more in the inning after Chourio let this ball fall. While it's hard to imagine the team taking Chourio's (or even Collins's) bat out of the lineup to make room for Perkins come the NLDS, they do need this kind of play to be made in order to win multiple series in the postseason. It's something Chourio will have to work on, even if much of that work will be mental. He has to trust all that athleticism, and start coming in harder to make catches on these could-be hits.