Jackson Chourio got a late start to his season. A fractured metacarpal in his left hand, suffered during the run-up to the World Baseball Classic but not definitively diagnosed until three weeks later, knocked him onto the injured list just hours before the Brewers’ Opening Day game, and he didn’t make his season debut until May 4. Since then, the 22-year-old outfielder has not only been one of the majors’ top hitters, he’s shown notable improvements in a few key areas while helping to propel the Brewers into first place in the NL Central. He’s becoming the star the Brewers hoped he would when they signed him to an eight-year, $82 million extension in December 2023, before he’d even debuted in the majors.
On Wednesday night against the Guardians, Chourio hit his 10th home run of the season, turning a high cutter from Gavin Williams into a two-run opposite-field shot that helped the Brewers to a 9-4 win:
Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/USA Today Network via Imagn Images
Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.
May 8
I’ve spent so much time writing about burping here that I feel I owe some context to anyone who hasn’t spent much time feeding babies. I’m sure you know the basics of the exercise. You raise the baby to your shoulder and pat them on the back until they burp or spit up. Voilà: You have burped a baby. That’s not wrong, but I never really understood the whys and wherefores until the last couple weeks.
Before I get into it, I feel like I should apologize. I’ve always been staunchly opposed to public discourse about bodily functions. When I was a kid, I tended to define myself in opposition to my older brother, and that was his thing. I was a voracious reader; he could burp the alphabet. I mimicked Ken Griffey Jr.’s stance and Cal Ripken Jr.’s sidearm throwing motion; he learned to spit like a big leaguer. Now, of course, my life is sometimes exclusively focused on bodily fluids and diaper drama and coaxing monster burps out of the sweetest little baby you ever saw, then exclaiming “Oh-ho-ho!” and congratulating her on their grandeur. Somehow, I have turned into the guy who texts this to his wife:
So. Babies are born with immature digestive systems. Everything is difficult. They choke easily, things often don’t sit right in their stomachs, they get the hiccups constantly, and they tend to go to the bathroom while they’re eating. All of these issues are distracting and uncomfortable. In order to avoid pouring more milk on those already dicey situations, evolution developed a simple fail-safe: If something’s wrong, the baby just won’t swallow the milk. Sometimes they’ll stop pulling it into their mouth in the first place, but even if they’re ravenous and they’re sucking aggressively, they’ll then just let it pour right out of their mouths and down their round faces.
When you’re feeding a baby, you have to listen carefully for the adorable little piglet grunts that indicate that they’re swallowing. You learn to appreciate the nuances of those teeny-tiny gasps and grunts and harrumphs, all of which tell you whether and how well they’re getting the milk down. When a baby is eating successfully, it should sound a bit like a Rich Hill start — wait, no, that’s way too intense — rather, it should sound like Rich Hill having a gentle game of catch. Here’s an audio recording of Derek Jr. during a particularly aggressive mealtime. It’s…a lot:
You can hear her grunting and swallowing and gulping for air. You can hear the wind whistling through the vent in the bottle. At one point, you can hear the milk tumbling down into her stomach. And if you listen really closely, you can hear my wife and me trying not to giggle so loudly at her ferocity that we ruin the recording.
When you’re feeding a baby, you’re listening and you’re constantly keeping an eye out for milk pooling at the corner of their mouth or dribbling down their chin. Whenever you sense that the milk is no longer flowing into the tummy, it’s burp time. A nice, big burp will resolve whatever buildup of gas is causing their distress, or at the very least, give them some time to reset themselves and get ready to resume the meal. Essentially, there’s something in the way, and your job is to shake it loose.
You put the bottle down, lift the baby by the armpits and sling them over your shoulder, and pound them on their tiny back as hard as your conscience will allow. (No matter how hard that may be, it’s be a butterfly kiss compared to the thwacks of the nurses at the hospital, who could slap a burp out of a cinder block.) You rock back and forth, because aligning the alimentary canal so that it’s leaning slightly forward can encourage a burp. You alternate between patting on the back and rubbing firmly from the lumbar region up toward the shoulders. (It’s unclear to me whether this actually induces a burp, but it seems like it would feel nice, and that makes you feel better about all the back whacking.) You walk around and bounce the baby on your shoulder as you go. I sometimes do a little shuttle run across the apartment, or put on a song and dance around just for fun.
As you do all this, you can’t help but verbally encourage the baby to burp. Often, the baby is very hungry and therefore very upset that you’re interrupting their (unsuccessful) alimentation, so you end up simultaneously whacking them on the back, explaining why you’re denying them food, and pleading for a burp. I often find myself emphasizing the transactional nature of the relationship like a kid attempting to prize away a friend’s prize rookie card. “Look, you and I both know what you want, and we both know there’s only one way to get it,” I’ll cajole. “If you can think of another way to get food in your belly, by all means, have at it. You scratch my back, I’ll stop whaling on yours.”
Eventually you’re rewarded with a big burp, which is your signal that the baby is ready to eat again. The burps always come suddenly, which means they often elicit from you a cry of surprise and joy, at which point you congratulate the baby like she just won the Super Bowl. I used to despise the very idea of wasting my precious attention on something as crass as burping. Now here I am 30 years later, telling my daughter how proud I am every time she emits a window-rattling burp.
Bottle feeding tends to require much more burping than breastfeeding. [Note from the future: We have also discovered that Derek Jr. needs significantly fewer burps if we feed her bottles that are closer to room temperature rather than from the fridge. She doesn’t mind the cold bottles, but she has a lot more trouble with them. We’re still learning here.] As a result, I’ve spent more time burping Derek Jr. than my wife has. I’m more comfortable with it. Compounding that is the fact that burping can be more challenging when you’re breastfeeding. My wife likes to have a whole pillow situation set up around her, along with her water bottle (because breastfeeding dehydrates you) and her phone to track how long Derek Jr. is eating. That’s no big deal for standard issue burps, but if you need to stand up and dance around the apartment to dislodge a particularly stubborn one, you have to reconfigure the whole nest when you sit back down. I’m desperate to find ways to lighten the huge load my wife is bearing as she recovers from the physical trauma of the birth, deals with massive postpartum hormone shifts, and gives over so much of her time to nursing and pumping, so I often volunteer to jump in and do the burping in order to preserve the nest. I’m now the designated burper.
Once the baby is finished eating, she’s usually adorably drowsy, but you can’t put her down to sleep right away. She needs time to process all the milk she just ingested, which means staying at least somewhat upright. If you put her on her back right away, she’ll be extremely uncomfortable. Even if she does fall asleep that way, she’ll likely get the hiccups or spit up, which is both scary and uncomfortable. The spit-up will run down her cheek and spread in a wet circle on the sheets beneath her face.
When things go well, burping leads right into this upright period, and she’s sleepy putty in your hands. She’s adorable and calm, and your job is to sit there and admire this warm little bundle who has dropped into your life. It’s a special time, and I feel certain that it’s what I will remember most about these last several weeks. It’s also the time when I’ve done most of the writing in this journal and the reason that so much of what I’ve written has been so lovey-dovey. If you were sitting with your drowsy baby’s warm body pressed against your chest and your cheek, you’d be mawkish too.
I tend to give Derek Jr. 20 or 25 minutes to digest, during which time I sing or play music or hold my phone out of her line of sight and watch baseball. It’s nearly four in the morning right now, long after all the games are over, so in between songs, I’m watching highlights of Jacob Misiorowski mowing down the Yankees. He struck out 11 while throwing harder than any starter has ever thrown. I wish I’d seen the whole game, because I’m genuinely curious about how Les Miz is progressing as a pitcher. PitcherList gave his location a B- tonight and Stuff+ gave it a 141, both the best grades he’s gotten all year. That’s exciting. When you’re sitting 101 mph with the fastball and — good Lord — 96 with the slider, B- command should work out just fine. The curveball is the pitch that jumps out the most, because there’s just no way for a hitter to be ready for such an extreme change of pace:
The most important thing I glean from the highlights, though, is that Misiorowski is still locked in a fierce battle against his own hat. The topic for today is shaking things loose, and it definitely applies to him. Watch him closely and you’ll notice that he has to adjust his hat after every single pitch. Clad in the new Brewers City Connects — with “Wisco” across the chest in script, they look more than anything like a product placement for a chain of off-brand gas stations — he still sports the stiffest brim in the league. I swear you could use that thing as a ruler.
Speaking of rulers, the 6-foot-7 Misiorowski is long and narrow everywhere, including his head. The hat doesn’t quite reach his ears. No wonder the thing never gets broken in; he’s barely even wearing it! This is actually something I noticed last year, when Eric Longenhagen posted slow motion footage of Misiorowski’s delivery. Combine a significant head whack with the fact that the stiff hat is basically resting atop his dome like a yarmulke, and you’ve got a recipe for a hat that bounces all over the place every time Misiorowski throws:
Eric A Longenhagen: Not doing backflips like I was with Rainiel last year. Frame/tools/skills pretty medium on Dos Santos.
12:04
dan norman lear: Not a “prospect” anymore, but any info/sense on Hurston Waldrep?
12:07
Eric A Longenhagen: Still bringing the kitchen sink, problematically bad feel for location, 92-97 t98 this year, lots of early-count cutters because of his heater’s vulnerability. Get why they want him to throw this many pitches and try to start but that aint happening.
12:07
dan norman lear: Throwing a dart: Assuming no injuries, OD STARTING OF for the 2027 Rockies?
Peyton Gray has one of the better backstories in baseball. A 31-year-old right-hander who made his major league debut with the Texas Rangers in April, Gray not only entered pro ball in 2018 as an undrafted free agent out of Florida Gulf Coast University, his résumé includes three seasons with the independent Atlantic Association’s Milwaukee Milkmen, as well as four stints in winter ball. Moreover, he’s undergone Tommy John surgery and been granted his release by the Colorado Rockies, Kansas City Royals, and Cincinnati Reds.
His 2026 numbers are impressive. The Columbus, Indiana native began the year by tossing 12 2/3 scoreless innings for Triple-A Round Rock, and since reaching The Show, he has come out of the bullpen 18 times and recorded a 3.70 ERA and a 3.71 FIP over 24 1/3 frames. Each of his two decisions have gone in the win column.
Gray’s top offering is an 83-mph changeup, which he has been throwing at a 44.0% clip to the tune of a .220 batting average allowed and a 31.0% whiff rate. I asked him about it when the Rangers visited Fenway Park earlier this month. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s an idiom that gets thrown around in soccer that I wish we would adopt here: talismanic. A talismanic player is particularly important to his team, especially for intangible reasons. Sometimes the club’s talisman is the best player on the squad, but not always. He’s the captain who marshals the defense, or the creative passer who ties the team’s attack together, or a veteran forward who always seems to find the crucial late goal.
We don’t really have a word for this kind of player in baseball. We have club icons, cult heroes, and players with veteran presence, but referring to a player as a talisman implies actual mystical powers that only the team and its fans can truly see.
On April 15, Zach Neto was at the plate with one out and nobody on in the top of the fifth inning of the Angels’ game in the Bronx, where his team trailed the Yankees, 3-2. The first two pitches, a low changeup and a high slider, were nowhere near the zone, and Neto laid off easily. The 2-0 pitch from Luis Gil was another slider, this one about belt high and bending away from the right-handed Neto, who kept the bat on his shoulder and watched as the pitch appeared to clip the outside edge of the zone. Home plate umpire Lance Barksdale held up his hand. Strike one. Neto tapped his helmet immediately to challenge the call.
The graphic on the gigantic video board in center field showed that the pitch had missed by 0.4 inches. The call was overturned; the count was now 3-0. Neto walked on the next pitch. Mike Trout stepped in, took a fifth straight ball from Gil, then let a four-seam fastball over the heart of the plate get deep on him. He unloaded, clobbering the cookie 383 feet into the right field seats for a go-ahead two-run blast.
The no-doubt Trout clout would have been the decisive blow in an Angels win if not for a misplayed popup and a Jordan Romano meltdown. The Yankees walked it off on a José Caballero single, relegating Neto’s challenge to a footnote in that night’s game story, if it was mentioned at all. Even so, the gamble was an early example of how the new automated ball-strike challenge system can make the difference between winning and losing a game. Read the rest of this entry »
Top prospects like Jesús Made and Leo De Vries are among the game’s most exciting potential call-ups this season, but most of the players who make the majors in the next couple of months won’t be in the same galaxy as those guys when it comes to their potential. Some may be fringe prospects, others former standouts who fell off team lists — some may have even already been labeled journeymen or organizational players. Nevertheless, a good number of them will contribute in the big leagues down the stretch. Some of last year’s impact rookies, like Caleb Durbin, Isaac Collins, Joey Cantillo, Justin Wrobleski, and Chad Patrick, weren’t Top 100 prospects — most would have struggled to make a Top 500 list. Yet their production mattered, and you can point to a dozen players like that every year.
We’re still a month away from the trade deadline, but relatively few top-tier players are available and the ones who are won’t come cheaply, meaning many teams will have to look internally as they work to improve their rosters. Below, I’ve chosen seven players, either fringe prospects or guys who’ve fallen off the big league radar, who have some combination of projection, performance, improvement, or a pressing team need that makes them intriguing over the rest of the 2026 season. Naturally, this leaves out top prospects like Kade Anderson, who I absolutely adore, and even pretty good ones, like James Tibbs III. Let’s dig a little deeper. Read the rest of this entry »
The first feature I created as a FanGraphs developer, duties I added to my existing RosterResource work early last season, was the Coaches Table, which is located in the Breakdowns section of RosterResource. Since I haven’t done nearly a good enough job of publicizing its existence, I’ll atone by making it today’s Feature Focus.
Beyond the uniformed coaches that every team employs these days (manager, bench coach, often multiple hitting and pitching coaches, and base coaches), there are a couple of extra columns in the table that group coaches more broadly. The first is the “FC/QC/Catching” column. Many teams have a field coordinator (FC), quality control coach (QC), and/or catching coach, though not every team does, as some clubs prefer to spread those responsibilities around to existing coaches. The “Other Coaches” column covers every other uniformed coach who lacks a title that fits cleanly in one of the other columns. These are often coaches with generic titles like “Major League coach,” but not exclusively so. Miguel Cairo of the Orioles, for example, serves as the dedicated infield coach, a role usually taken by one of the base coaches in addition to his duties at first or third. Read the rest of this entry »
A friend of mine is a Tigers fan, God help him. He’s upset about baseball quite a bit these days, and the other night he was miffed about something specific: With two outs in the ninth inning and the tying run coming to the plate, Detroit manager A.J. Hinch pinch-hit with Jake Rogers.
Whatever else the Tigers’ backup catcher has going for him, he’s not a very good hitter. He’s hitting .155/.239/.276 this season, with a 30.9% strikeout rate. (All stats in this article are current through Tuesday’s games.) That’s a wRC+ of 42. Rogers had about a season’s worth of pretty good offensive production spread from 2021 to 2023 — like, a good Mike Zunino season, with a low-.200s batting average, a bunch of home runs, and a strikeout rate in the 30s — but overall he’s a career .198/.268/.380 hitter. He hasn’t batted .200 in a season in three years.
Sure enough, Rogers struck out on four pitches to end the game.
So yeah, it’s jarring to see that guy not only at the plate with the game on the line, but to come off the bench with the game on the line. Hinch put Rogers there on purpose, which seems like the work of a madman.
