The Milwaukee Brewers are already looking ahead to the 2026 season, with a focus on the outfield and the designated hitter position. Christian Yelich’s transition into full-time designated hitting continues. Two of the three outfield spots are firmly spoken for. However, the third outfield spot is a position where there’s likely to be a decent amount of rotation throughout the season.
Jackson Chourio’s Development
Jackson Chourio will be 22 next Wednesday. Chourio has put together two productive seasons, back-to-back 20/20 seasons in which he’s averaged about three WAR per season. That makes him one of the most productive Brewers. He has not yet played a regular-season game over the age of 21.
There have been times, including in the postseason, when Chourio looked pretty clearly like the best hitter on the team. The defense has been a bit up and down, but there have been encouraging signs. You’d like to see him lower his caught-stealing rate, but he’s very fast and clearly has some base-stealing ability. After starting last season with an alarmingly bad walk rate, his plate discipline has looked rather good this spring.
Chourio can hit a baseball. He has extremely quick hands, and he can get to pitches that maybe he shouldn’t be able to get to. Simply improving his plate discipline — which improved quite a bit over the course of last season — and making modest gains in his consistency in the field and on the basepaths would make him a borderline All-Star.
He’s hit .275 and .270 in his first two seasons with 21 homers in both years. Maybe we’ll get a 30/30 season.
Garrett Frelick’s Role
Frelick almost feels like a solid veteran at this point in his career, even though he’s not quite 26 yet and he’s only played two full seasons in the big leagues. Frelick improved quite a bit last season. His OPS went up by over 100 points, he hit six times as many homers as in 2024, and his wRC+ went from 87 to 114.
Defensively, Frelick didn’t quite perform at the level he did when he won a Gold Glove in 2024, but he was still one of the better corner outfielders in the league.
Frelick’s Future Performance
It seems unlikely that his power is going to creep up a whole lot more, and he did benefit from a solid .317 BABIP (though that was at .306 the year before, and Frelick, because he’s fast and hits a lot of weird little ground balls, might just