The Little Sequence Before Jackson Chourio's Big Swing

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Jackson Chourio faced Jacob Webb in one of the first fistful of games of his career. It was April 2024, and the Brewers were in Baltimore, finishing off a shellacking of the Orioles. When he came to the plate, the Crew led 11-1, and although it was technically an RBI opportunity, there were no stakes; there was no reason to be especially locked-in. Chourio took a big rip at the first pitch and flied out harmlessly.

The offering was a changeup, Webb's signature pitch. It wasn't exceptionally well-located, but Chourio got it off the end of his bat. That was a tough matchup for the rookie—you don't see many right-on-right changeups in the minors, and the ones you do see tend to be meatballs. Webb got him out, but neither player is likely to have thought much about that moment since. It was one of those plays that happen when both sides are just trying to get to the final out and go enjoy the postgame meal.

Webb and Chourio saw each other again earlier this season. During Milwaukee's sweep of Chicago at Wrigley Field in May, Webb was still little more than a mop-up man for the Cubs, so he was pitching in the top of the sixth in a game the visitors led 3-0. That at-bat mattered more than the last time the two squared off, but it still wasn't very high-leverage. It also came after each had had more time to prepare for it. Chourio is no longer a clean-shaven cherub; he's a bearded nightmare for pitchers and a budding superstar. Webb signed with Chicago over the winter, so he was surely one of the pitchers the Brewers loaded into the Trajekt machine for preparatory work before that series.

Thus, both players knew something they might not have known (and certainly didn't care much about) in early 2024: Chourio's swing is a scary-good fit for Webb's changeup. Thus, the righty eschewed that offering in the matchup. He missed outside with a high fastball on the first pitch, but found the plate with one on 1-0. After Chourio fouled that pitch off, Webb fired a low heater to steal a called strike and stretch the zone. On 1-2, he finally broke out something totally different—but it was his big-breaking curveball, dipping to the bottom edge of the zone. Chourio had been covering the fastball; he hit the curve off the end of the bat, He did stay on it well enough to hit the ball to right-center field, but without much oomph.

Since then, the two hadn't seen each other at all. Webb went on a long hot streak, and emerged as the Cubs' de facto closer for a while. He's since been bitten by the venomous snake that is regression, but it's been a good season for Webb. He says he's never had better feel for his changeup, and his confidence in that offering helped him become a high-leverage option for Craig Counsell.

There's no chance Webb forgot that Chourio's swing suits his changeup in a dangerous way, The Cubs should have had that at the top of their scouting report on that potential matchup. However, pitchers who start to feel a bit of trouble tend to retreat to the pitch they trust most. Webb had gotten the first two batters he faced, and had he retired Christian Yelich, too, he wouldn't have even needed to face Chourio. Yelich singled, though, bringing Chourio to the plate as the tying run. Under immediate pressure, Webb went with a first-pitch changeup.

That offering looked a lot like the one in Baltimore two and a half years ago. In between, Chourio came to bat over 1,600 times, but his reaction to the pitch looked very similar, too. He was early. He caught it off the end of the bat. This time, the lumber even cracked, and he topped it off to the left for a foul ball.

Strictly speaking, that swing wasn't good news. Webb had been trying to disrupt Chourio's timing, and he'd succeeded. If Chourio had been fooled less badly, he might well have grounded or flied out to end the game uneventfully. On that one pitch, Webb had won the showdown. Yet, as Chourio went to get a new bat, he had a confident smile on his face, and he seemed to chat lightly and confidently with someone near the dugout as he began to head back to the box. That's because he knew something important: that pitch had gone well enough that Webb would try it again.

Chourio's plan on the first pitch was to cover Webb's mid-90s fastball, especially up. Being able to touch the changeup proved to the young slugger that he had both of Webb's key offerings covered, as needed. But because Webb got positive feedback from the first-pitch cambio, Chourio could step back in (with his new lumber) planning to ambush another one.

If Webb had executed the next pitch better, things might have gone differently. Instead, this time, he left that pitch up—running in on the edge of the plate, but belt-high, rather than down at the kneecaps. Chourio, whose flat swing has always been perfectly designed to punish mistake offspeed pitches just like that one, was all over it.

We often look for long sequences to mark great at-bats. We often think of first- or second-pitch slams as mindless ambushes or brutal mistakes. There was a bit of that in this one. But there was also some real hitting genius at work. Chourio, still very young but a savvier player than he used to be, learned a lot in a short time from facing Webb. In May, he learned that the righty didn't want to throw him his changeup. Once he got one, though, he knew to expect the second. He had to let go, a little bit, of the outside fastball. He had to set his sights on the same pitch he'd just seen, rather than committing himself to the ball away. There was time to have those thoughts, and to let the moment build. There was a real sequence in there. It's just made up mostly of negative space. Once Chourio actually swung the bat, that space filled up in a hurry—as always seems to happen, lately, when there's a gap the Brewers need Chourio to fill.