Winning one title in a year is hard enough. Winning two puts you in one of baseball’s most exclusive clubs. In March, Jackson Chourio, William Contreras and Antonio Senzatela helped Team Venezuela win a World Baseball Classic championship in Miami.
Seven months later, they're celebrating winning another title in Florida. With the Milwaukee Brewers’ 4-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 5 of the World Series, the trio became just the third, fourth and fifth players in baseball history to win the World Baseball Classic and the World Series in the same calendar year. Until now, only two players had won two world titles in the same calendar year: Alex Bregman and Luke Gregerson.
Both won the 2017 WBC with Team USA and the 2017 World Series with the Houston Astros. Bregman was a 22-year-old in his first full big-league season that year, and Gregerson was a veteran reliever in the Astros’ bullpen. Many players have won both a WBC and World Series title during their careers, such as Shohei Ohtani (Japan/Dodgers), Buster Posey (USA/Giants), and Salvador Perez (Venezuela/Royals), but they won them in different years rather than the same calendar year.
For the Brewers trio, the first title came back in March, when Venezuela beat the United States 3-2 to win its first-ever WBC championship. Seven months ago, Chourio was limited in the World Baseball Classic due to suffering a broken hand during spring training, so he batted ninth for the Venezuelan team that won the tournament. In the semifinal against Italy, Chourio executed a hit-and-run during Venezuela’s seventh-inning rally and later scored the go-ahead run on Maikel Garcia’s RBI single.
Garcia was named tournament MVP. Contreras’ contributions in March were also limited, but not due to injury. Royals veteran Salvador Perez, Venezuela’s captain, handled much of the catching and was behind the plate for the title game, so Contreras appeared in only four games and went hitless.
He still walked onto the podium with his older brother Willson, the Boston Red Sox first baseman, to receive their medals together. Seven months later, the younger Contreras spent October guiding Milwaukee’s pitching staff, including a bullpen game in the NLCS clincher against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Senzatela’s path to this double was the most unlikely.
He was a member of the Colorado Rockies when he won the WBC, and he had spent his entire 10-year career in Colorado up to that point. After moving to the bullpen full-time in 2026, the Brewers acquired him at the Aug. 3 trade deadline to add another arm to their bullpen.
A fourth Brewer was part of both championship teams but won’t officially join the list. Left-hander Ángel Zerpa pitched for Venezuela in the WBC, but he landed on the injured list in late April with left forearm tightness and underwent Tommy John surgery in May, ending his season. The sweep completes a remarkable turnaround for the first-time champion Brewers.
Milwaukee entered the postseason with MLB’s best record at 103-59, A year after the Dodgers swept them in the 2025 NLCS, the Brewers swept the two-time defending champions to reach their first World Series since 1982. Now the Brewers finally have one, and three of their players won two championships in 2026.
