Teenage Phenom Jackson Chourio Is Swinging His Way Up The Milwaukee Brewers’ Prospect Ladder

Jackson Chourio had never stepped onto a major league field before coming out of the dugout at Dodger Stadium last week for the MLB All-Star Futures Game.

At the rate things are going, it’s only a matter of time until Chourio does so on a daily basis.

The young outfielder from Venezuela has emerged as the Milwaukee Brewers’ top prospect and one of the best in all of baseball this season and along with serving as one of Milwaukee’s three minor league representatives at the Midsummer Classic, recently earned a promotion to High A Wisconsin, where he’s the Midwest League’s youngest player by more than nine months.

“This year has been awesome,” Chourio said. “I feel extremely blessed and super excited.”

Just 16 when he signed with Milwaukee as an international free agent in January 2021, Chourio was already highly-regarded for being a five-tool player with high upside. He started his pro career on a high note, slashing .296/.386/.447 with five home runs, 25 RBIs and an .833 OPS in 45 games for the Brewers Dominican Summer League Affiliate but wasn’t considered one of the organization’s top prospects heading into Spring Training.

That changed quickly.

Assigned to Cass A Carolina where he was the league’s youngest player,, Chourio played his way to the top of Milwaukee’s prospect rankings and into the discussion for best in all of baseball by slashing .324/.373/.600, hitting 12 home runs with 47 RBIs and producing a .973 OPS in 62 games.

Chourio was rewarded for that performance with an invitation to represent the Brewers at the MLB All-Star Futures Game in Los Angeles where he went 0-for-2 in the game but relished in the experience, especially sharing it with fellow Brewers prospects Joey Wiemer and Antoine Kelly.

“It was breath-taking,” Chourio said. “Being in that environment was awesome.”

So, too, was learning upon his return that he’d earned a promotion.

“It’s pretty incredible what he’s doing at his age,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. That was one of the best parts of Spring Training for us, the last three days, getting to know the really young players in our organization – a lot of whom are having really nice seasons. Jackson is obviously having an incredible season. But that whole group, we had so much fun as a staff working with those players the last three days of spring. It’s a really good group of young players, led by Jackson of course. There’s going to be more big leaguers than just Jackson from that group.”

After taking a day to get acclimated to his new surroundings and teammates, Chourio went right back to work with a two-hit day that included an RBI double and followed that up by going 2-for-5 with a run scored the next day then singled and scored again his third time out with the Timber Rattlers.