MLB Network's Jackson Chourio quote highlights Brewers' impressive succession of star outfielders

In the world of Wisconsin sports, the most talked-about line of succession is the Green Bay Packers' transition from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers to now Jordan Love at the quarterback position. The passing of a torch from one Hall of Fame quarterback to another and now to a promising young play-caller in Love is undoubtedly an impressive string of star talent. However, what gets talked about far less is the fact that Green Bay's fellow Wisconsin-based sports team, the Milwaukee Brewers, has had an incredible succession of star players themselves.

From the moment Ryan Braun debuted for the Brewers on May 25, 2007, the Brewers' organization has undergone an impressive transformation. After failing to reach the postseason for 25 seasons from 1983 to 2007, Braun returned the Brew Crew to the playoffs in 2008, and since then, the Golden Age of Brewers baseball has commenced. Including their 2008 postseason appearance, the Brewers have qualified for the playoffs 10 times, reached the NLCS three times, and won the NL Central six times (soon to be seven) since Braun's debut.

While Braun certainly earns the credit for kick-starting this period of sustained success, many of those postseason appearances have come with Christian Yelich serving as the Brewers' clubhouse leader. The Brewers traded for Yelich ahead of the 2018 season and immediately returned to the postseason for the first time since 2011 with him leading the way. Yelich won the NL MVP in 2018 while sharing an outfield with Braun, who took home the same award seven years earlier, when the Brewers last reached the NLCS in 2011.

Braun and Yelich continued to play side-by-side through the shortened 2020 season before the former retired after a record-breaking 14-year career. Four years later, a new soon-to-be star outfielder joined the mix: 20-year-old Jackson Chourio. Similar to how Yelich and Braun manned the corner outfield positions at opposite ends of their MLB careers back in 2018-2020, Chourio stood opposite Yelich in the corner outfield during his rookie season while Yeli began his age-32 campaign.

Fast forward two years and the torch appears to be passing to Chourio just as it did to Yelich back in 2018. While Yelich, who is under contract through the 2028 season, remains productive, similar to how Braun was as his career came to a close, it's clear Chourio is taking over as the Brewers' star outfielder, continuing what has quietly been one of the more impressive superstar pipelines in Major League Baseball. Chourio's emergence as the key piece of the Brewers' offense has certainly caught the attention of MLB Network analyst and Team USA manager Mark DeRosa.

From Braun to Yelich to Chourio, the Brewers' succession of superstar outfielders has been a key to their ongoing Golden Age

Chourio has somehow yet to be named to an All-Star Game, but it's not difficult to imagine the young outfielder racking up an impressive amount of individual accolades throughout his time with the Brewers. Given the fact that at just 22 years old, Chourio has already put together three 20+ homer seasons, and currently has 4.4 bWAR during the 2026 campaign, it's by no means out of the question that the budding superstar sees his name enter MVP conversations in the near future.

The fact that Milwaukee has gone from one MVP-winning outfielder to another MVP-winning outfielder to Chourio, who is one of the most exciting young talents in the game, is an incredible feat, made more impressive by the fact that the Brewers have done so in the smallest market in baseball. The Brewers can't simply sign superstars, as DeRosa calls them, on the free agent market. Rather, they have to draft them, like they did with Braun, trade for them on the cusp of a breakout, like they did with Yelich, or sign them on the international market and develop them in their farm system, like they did with Chourio. Creating superstars, therefore, is far more difficult in a market like Milwaukee than it is in, say, Los Angeles, where stars seem to flock without the Dodgers even trying.

This succession of superstar outfielders has yielded a once-unfathomable level of success for the Brewers, but it still has yet to lead them to their first World Series championship. Braun and Yelich came close back in 2018, when they led Milwaukee to Game 7 of the NLCS, but the duo ultimately came up short. Perhaps the combination of Chourio on the cusp of superstardom and Yelich experiencing a late-career resurgence is the formula that will finally get the Brewers over the hump.

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