Sunday at Camden Yards was the kind of night franchises frame. Milwaukee won its 98th game, the most in team history, and Jackson Chourio did something no player in the 150-year history of Major League Baseball has done.
The Record
In the sixth inning, Chourio walked and stole second. Milwaukee had to challenge the call, and it was overturned to safe.
That steal was his 20th of 2026, pairing with 24 home runs to give him three separate 20-homer, 20-steal seasons before his 23rd birthday. No player has ever done that. He stole two bases on the night and sits at 21.
Worth separating from a different milestone: on Aug. 30 he hit his 20th home run of the season, his third straight 20-homer year. The record that happened Sunday is the stolen base half.
The Numbers Behind It
Chourio turned 22 in March. He is hitting .285/.344/.481 with a .825 OPS, 24 home runs, 21 steals, 70 RBI and 89 runs across 121 games. All three slash-line figures are career highs.
He hit 21 homers with 22 steals as a rookie in 2024 and 21 with 21 in 2025. Only Julio Rodriguez and Bobby Witt Jr. have also opened a career with three consecutive 20-20 seasons, and neither did it before turning 23.
He Missed Five Weeks and Still Got There
This is the detail that should scare the rest of the National League. Chourio fractured a bone at the base of his left middle finger after being hit by a pitch while playing for Team Venezuela in a tune-up game ahead of the World Baseball Classic. The severity was not clear until he landed on the injured list the morning of Opening Day.
He missed the first five weeks and did not debut until May 4 against St. Louis, when he went 4-for-4 with two doubles.
Take away a month of the season and he still set a record that has stood since the sport began.
The Brewers Broke Their Own Record
Milwaukee completed a three-game sweep of Baltimore with a 3-0 win, its 98th victory of 2026. That surpasses the 97 wins the club recorded in 2025, and before that the franchise mark was 96, set in 1979 and matched in 2011 and 2018.
William Contreras led off the fourth with a 403-foot home run to left, his 18th. Rookie Cooper Pratt drove in two, including an RBI single in the seventh off Felix Bautista. DL Hall got the win and Trevor Megill picked up his 29th save.
At 98-58 the Brewers own the best record in baseball, ahead of the 96-60 Dodgers, and have clinched a fourth straight NL Central title along with the National League’s No. 1 seed.
Misiorowski Is the Other Story
Jacob Misiorowski threw three innings Sunday, allowing one hit with four strikeouts in a planned short outing ahead of the postseason.
He leads all of baseball with a 1.86 ERA and 247 strikeouts, is 15-4, and just moved into second on Milwaukee’s single-season strikeout list behind Ben Sheets, who fanned 264 in 2004. He reached 200 strikeouts faster than all but one pitcher in MLB history.
Why Milwaukee Should Terrify Everyone
Pat Murphy has the best record in baseball, the Cy Young frontrunner and a 22-year-old outfielder rewriting the record book.
Jake Bauers has 26 homers and a team-best .894 OPS. Brice Turang leads the club with 93 RBI. This is not a small-market team overachieving into a division title. It is the best roster in the sport.
The scary part for everyone else is that Chourio has played three seasons and is still 22.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.