The MLB Was Not Ready For What Jackson Chourio Just Did...

The MLB was not ready for what Jackson Churio just did. I wasn't ready for it, but I was just so in awe of what we saw in Game 2 of the NLDS. Jackson Churio in his third postseason in his three years in the Major Leagues just continues to get better time and time again. A walk-off two-run single off of the best closer Major League Baseball, Mason Miller. You can't really script it better than that. You have the bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth. All of that, and it ends up with a Brewers win. Let's talk about all that on today's episode of Brewers Digest. I'm your host, Taylor Brettel, and I got you covered on everything you need to know about the Milwaukee Brewers and everything you need to know about Jackson Churio, the man of Milwaukee. This is a guy that the Brewers signed before he even played a single game at the Major League level, I should say, and this contract is looking absolutely incredible. The amount of clutchness this guy has in the postseason, if that's a word that he has brought to Milwaukee in these three years, it's the best that we've ever seen. Now, the Brewers are in the prime of their franchise. They're making the playoffs year after year, unlike many years in the past. So Churio keeps getting opportunities, but he makes sure to not go away from the spotlight, you could say, in any of those opportunities. We just saw greatness yesterday, the walk-off two-run single. He got the Gatorade bath from multiple teammates, probably the loudest crowd pop that you will hear at American Family Field. I hope that there's one that's louder because that could come later in his playoff run in the CES or the World Series if the Brewers were to advance to either of those rounds. But Jackson Churio, the hero of Milwaukee, a guy that should not have to buy a drink for himself for a long time in the city of Milwaukee. Really exciting stuff to see. But let's go into some neat statistics on just how impactful this hit was and how impactful Jackson Churio has been in the postseason for the Milwaukee Brewers. This was one of the coolest stats that I found with yesterday's walk-off. This comes from OptaStats. It says Jackson Churio is the second MLB player to deliver a postseason walk-off hit with his team trailing and with a pitcher who led his league in saves during the regular season on the mound since saves became an official stat in 1969. The other was Kirk Gibson off of Dennis Eckersley in what is one of the most iconic hits in MLB history. I mean, these two hits are huge. I think it's going to be hard to top just how legendary the Kirk Gibson one was. But situationally, Jackson Churio, similar impact. Obviously, different stage, different year, all that. But I thought that was pretty neat that OptaStats was able to find that out. That is some pretty elite company when you're talking about impact in the postseason. And there's a lot of impact on the Milwaukee Brewers that the captain is starting to take notice. And he's been noticing all year. Christian Jelich spoke on the type of player that Jackson Churio is becoming. Jelich had to say he's just going to continue to get better. And that's kind of scary because he's pretty good right now. And I could not disagree with that at all. Jackson Churio, again, only 22 years old, 20 years old as rookie year, 21 years old last season, now 22 this year. And the Brewers signing him to that contract before he played a major league game, which was a risk. But it's a it's a way the Brewers are able to get these young stars at a cheaper price. If Jackson Churio, you know, imagine he's doing this right now and the Brewers are still looking to sign him. This guy would probably be asking for a little bit more. But happy to have him here in Milwaukee. I want to go back to yesterday's contest. We talked about the at bat, but I really want to break this down pitch by pitch, especially with just the change from a fastball that goes over 100 miles an hour to a slider that has similar movement about 70% of the way to the batter. And then it splits at the very end. Jackson Churio, with arguably the best at bat of the year in all of major league baseball, when you think of how important it was on the stage and you think of the result that ended up happening. We look at this at bat from Jackson Churio. And I want to go to when the count is one and two. Jackson Churio swung through in 102 mile an hour fastball right down the middle. When you see something like that, it's like you're probably not going to see a better pitch than that the entire at bat because that one was really middle middle. But Mason Miller goes right back to the fastball, throws it even harder at 103.5. Got to believe that's the fastest pitch that Jackson Churio has ever seen in his entire career at any level. And he fouls that one off like ever so slightly, but straight back. So it shows you that he's on it. You then follow up that fastball with a slider at 89 miles an hour. And Churio is able to lay off it. I thought it was the perfect pitch selection from Mason Miller. You want a guy to swing and miss, but you want him to chase. You want to make sure it's nowhere near the zone. So if he makes contact, it should be really weak and in play. The fact that Churio laid off this is just so insane. Just his discipline at the plate. You'd think he's a 35 year old veteran that's been on the stage hundreds of times. No, he's 22 years old. Only his third postseason with the Milwaukee Brewers. After that foul ball, before it got to that slider, you saw Jackson Churio. When you see a look like this in the eyes of someone, you know that he is ready to do some damage. I don't know if he was speaking to the bat, if he sniffed the bat to see if it burned a little bit when he just made slight contact with 104 mile an hour fastball. I don't know what he was saying to the bat, but it clearly worked out in the end. I'm going to take a look also the overlay of the slider and the fastball. Take a look at this. This is from Pitching Ninja. They put the those two pitches over one another and just look at how similar these pitches are from the release where they sit on the way to the mound. Or sorry, on the way to the plate. One of them, that slider, goes so low it almost bounces in the dirt. And the other one is right there in the zone for Jackson Churio. The velocity between these two pitches, a differential of about 15 miles an hour. To lay off that slider is just insane discipline. But when again, when you have a look like this in the eyes of a batter that wants to get it done, that says bring me the spotlight, you can pretty well guarantee that Jackson Churio is going to do some damage. And that is exactly what he did. But we're talking about this walk off. We're talking about this hit. We got to talk about just how impactful he's been in these two postseason games overall, because this guy plays in left field. He's not a DH. We go earlier in this contest by a half an inning. Jackson Churio made a really nice catch. I think a lot of people are going to forget about on a Fernando Tatis deep fly ball to left field with the Padres leading three to two Trevor McGill in the game. Jackson Churio made this nice grab, had to jump up a little bit. And that was like above his head. That wasn't right in front of him. That was above his head. That could have been a double. Tatis wasn't hustling too much out of the box because he thought he got a hold of it. Churio makes that catch. The score stays at three to two and then flips to that next inning where Churio has the walk off. You also go to the game before, which I know this is obviously a way different situation, controversial, even though it's the right rule, all that. But I got to talk about the roof game in game one to make a catch like this off the roof. You're not expecting it to hit the roof. I don't know how many times Jackson Churio has caught a ball in American family field that has hit the roof because it's never happened in a game that he's played in. So it only have to be BP if he's in the field for that in the right position. Like this might have been the first catch he's made off a roof. In general, we saw that hit obviously hit very hard, 105 miles an hour hits off that roof and go shooting down. That was fast. That took a direct cut angle down. Jackson Churio able to reside under it to get the second out of the ninth inning in a game that the Brewers ended up winning to go up one nothing in the series. Two huge fielding moments that I think a lot of people aren't talking about as much just because the hitting has been that good and the hitting has been that good for the entire postseason in all three years for Churio. Take a look at this kid's postseason log right here. Dating back to his rookie season, we have it from top to bottom. The top being his first postseason game. The bottom being the most recent one in that walk-off win against the Padres. But you go to the top, his first postseason game as a Milwaukee Brewer. He drives in a run, goes two for four. Then you go to the next one. He hits two home runs in a win or go home or for the Brewers win or go home kind of a thing. They're down one nothing. You need to win two out of three. So the Brewers are backs against the wall. Jackson Churio with two homers in that one. You see he has five home runs through 14 postseason games. And I want to show you just how impactful the long ball has been. This walk-off against the Padres was a two-run single, but the long ball has been so impressive. We go to that game two against the Mets. Again, Brewers down one nothing in the series. They're one loss away from being eliminated from the postseason. And take a look at how this game unfolded. For those of you that might be new Brewers fans and not know about this, or those of you that were watching this series, that unfortunately ended a little sad at that game three. But forget about the little moments. Jackson Churio in this one. They're in this game two where they need to win or else they go home. The Brewers are down one nothing early. Jackson Churio responds in the bottom of the first inning with a home run to tie the game up. His second home run that came in the game was also one to tie the game back up. That came in the bottom of the eighth inning. Garrett Mitchell later on hit a two-run homer to get that five to three lead. But he's not only taking swings that go over the fence, they're going over the fence in very important moments. We then go to another game where he had a home run in the postseason. Take it back to last year against the Chicago Cubs where it was NLDS game two. Similar stage this time against the Cubs. Jackson Churio had a huge swing and a drive in the bottom of the fourth inning. A three-run home run. This was a four to three ball game. Jackson Churio broke the scoring open to make it a 7-3 lead for the crew. And no runs were scored on either side from that point on. Obviously the Brewers are already leading at that time. But to have a one-run lead compared to a four-run lead is a huge difference. Take it on to the next round which was the NLCS last year. And I know that this score is different. It is a 5-1 loss for Milwaukee. But Jackson Churio is facing Yoshinobu Yamamoto who just absolutely carved up every single Milwaukee Brewers batter. Really, except for Jackson Churio. His first at-bat in that game was a home run over the right field wall giving the Brewers an early lead. Which again, they obviously would not hold on to. But this guy, I mean, whether it's early in the game, whether it's late in the game, he does not back down at all. You are just so confident that he is going to put a big swing on it. It's easy to talk about the long ball like we've been doing. So it's kind of fun that he got a walk-off single still able to shoot it through the infield in that example. But Churio, he is a young star as we talked about time and time again. I'm gonna flash this up here on the big screen for you once more just because these are some big stats that you really have to pay attention to. So you look at this list right here. And you're probably wondering what this list consists of. There are some pretty big names there. Andrew Jones, who's now recently in the Baseball Hall of Fame, is the one that leads it. But this stat right here is the most postseason RBI before turning 23 years old. Andrew Jones leads this list. Jackson Churio is in second. But if you notice, Andrew Jones, he did it in 45 games. Jackson Churio has done this in 14. Which, side note, Andrew Jones to play 45 games in the postseason before turning 23 is unreal on how good those teams were that he was on. But Jackson Churio is already second on this list. He's already second. And we hope that the Brewers have a deep playoff run and he's able to take the first place spot because the Brewers go here and then the CS and then the World Series. But this list is incredible. Addison Russell, that was a guy that was really good with the Cubs. Juan Soto should be a future Hall of Famer. Devers, I mean, that's a stud in today's game. Miguel Cabrera, Hall of Famer. Gleyber Torres had some very exciting stints in his younger years of his career with the Yankees. Mickey Mantle, that's a name you don't have to really have a definition for. But it's a lot of legends on this list. Jackson Churio joins that group. To take a look at the numbers a little bit better right here. Again, Churio doing it in only 14 games. Look at the batting averages when doing this. Churio holds the best batting average and also the best OPS and OPS+. By far out of all of this. If you were to point at one con for Churio's postseason performance, I guess you'd say he doesn't walk much. But when you're about .327, that means you're comfortable swinging away. That means you're really good at swinging away. And we clearly have seen that through these first two games, through last year's postseason and through the postseason before that. But again, Jackson Churio, this guy is just incredible. A young superstar for the Milwaukee Brewers that they are getting on, what I would say is a budget deal. Because they took the risk with the guy that had not played a single MLB game, signing him to a contract. He's here for seven more years in Milwaukee. He's the new face of the franchise, the young star that is coming up. It's really fun to see Christian Jelic coming over from a trade, having those prime years. Getting the Brewers to a consistent contender. He now gets the captain's patch and he now is paired up with Jackson Churio. You can kind of see the current GOAT of the franchise, despite some shaky years with Jelic. You can see Churio's the one that's going to come right behind him when Jelic hopefully doesn't retire for a while. But it's just the reality of the sport. Really neat to see that there's a young superstar that the Brewers have for the future. But we go to the question that I have for you guys. Jackson Churio is currently a top what postseason hitter in MLB? And this is right now. And you don't have to include the players that are in this postseason. If you want to say Vladimir Guerrero Jr. still holds that top spot just because of what he did for the Blue Jays last year, you can do something like that. Me personally, I don't really know where I put him on this list because I think it's a really hard statistic since different teams like the playoffs year after year. But I only ended this list at 10. He's got to be in the top 10, in my opinion. I might go top five. That might be a little bit crazy. But it's just the fact that there's clutchness. There could be some guys that bat like 250, but they always get the big hits. Churio is getting the big hits, and he's batting 327 while getting big hits. And I know this is only a hitter question I'm asking you while he's at the plate. He is great in the field. He had another play that I didn't even mention. Tatis roped a liner to left, and Churio was able to cut it off. So Tatis could not extend to second base. I mean, if I put the words postseason player here, he might be even higher than if we have it just postseason hitter. But I would go five when you really think of the pool that remains. I mean, there's going to be some young guys that are in some of their first couple of postseasons as well. Like you go to the AL, a junior common arrow, that's a guy that can explode and look like one of, if not the best players in the American League now that Jordan and the Astros are eliminated. So this is obviously a question that can have a wide range of answers. But Jackson Churio, again, the hero for the Milwaukee Brewers. We hope that we continue to see this from him when he goes on the road. The one thing that I will kind of note, which was interesting when looking at this, he just plays really well at home. He's comfortable at home. Batter's out. He's gotten really used to because we think of the other playoff runs. I mean, the Mets won. The Brewers were only at home in that one. The Cubs won. The Brewers were home for three of those five games and then unfortunately struggled against the Dodgers the next round. So hoping that Churio is able to show it on the road a little bit. That'll be the one thing that I'm curious to see. How do you perform in a road environment? But I'm not going to call this guy Mr. October. That is a Reggie Jackson title. But man, he's Mr. October to the city of Milwaukee, to the state of Wisconsin and to this Brewers team that is looking to advance the NLCS. They got a game tomorrow against the San Diego Padres. Dustin May will be getting the start. Expect to see Jackson Churio in that lineup batting first because like Pat Murphy said, he's a guy that has to get the most opportunities in that lineup. But that's all I got for this episode of Brewers Digest. I appreciate you tuning in as always. Always fun to talk about the crew and talk about it with you guys. Hoping to make many, many more videos talking about some playoff wins. But man, Jackson Churio, an up and coming superstar. 2020, three straight seasons. Even better in the postseason. I'll make sure to talk to you guys tomorrow, previewing game three against the Padres.