David Ortiz didn’t hold back. Sitting alongside Alex Rodríguez, Derek Jeter, and Kevin Burkhardt on the MLB on FOX postgame desk after Game 3 of the 2026 NLCS, Big Papi watched Jackson Chourio take the very first pitch from Blake Snell and drive it 391 feet at 106.1 mph into the right-center gap at Dodger Stadium — and the Hall of Famer immediately reached for the biggest name he could think of: a young Miguel Cabrera.
Ortiz described Chourio as a hitter with zero fear at the plate, someone who goes up looking to do damage — exactly the mentality Miggy had when he was coming up. He was also careful to add, «I know he’s got a way to go to get to that level.» This wasn’t a career comparison. It was a mentality comparison. And coming from Ortiz, in prime time, during the NLCS, it landed like a bomb.
Why the Cabrera Reference Matters
For a Venezuelan ballplayer, there’s no higher ceiling to be compared to. Cabrera won the Triple Crown in 2012, is the only player in the modern era to win back-to-back MVPs, and finished his career as one of the three or four greatest pure hitters of the last half-century. Venezuelan baseball media had been building the Chourio narrative from the ground up for months. Ortiz just put it on national television.
The Records That Made the Comparison Possible
That home run off Snell was Chourio’s sixth of his postseason career — enough to make him the all-time MLB leader in postseason home runs before age 23, passing Kyle Schwarber and Juan Soto. But the home run is just the headline.
- 18 postseason RBI in his career, the most by any player before age 23 in MLB history — surpassing Andruw Jones.
- 3 leadoff home runs in playoff games, tying Jimmy Rollins, Derek Jeter, and Shohei Ohtani (only Schwarber, with 5, has more).
- These numbers span three postseason runs (2024, 2025, 2026), which makes the consistency even more striking than any single series could.
Milwaukee swept the defending two-time champion Dodgers 4-0 to reach the World Series. Chourio didn’t do it alone — Jake Bauers took NLCS MVP honors and the Brewers bullpen posted a 0.83 ERA in the postseason — but the outfielder from Maracaibo is the face of this team, and Ortiz’s words landed at exactly the moment the entire baseball world was watching.
What the Numbers Say in 2026
The Cabrera comp doesn’t come out of nowhere. Chourio’s Statcast profile in the 2026 regular season explains why he hits the ball the way he does:
- 573 plate appearances
- 25 home runs, 75 RBI
- AVG: .291 | OPS: .838
- xwOBA: .344 — what his quality of contact says he should be producing
- Exit velocity: 91.6 mph avg | Barrel rate: 12.3% | Hard-hit: 47%
- Bat speed: 74.4 mph avg
Against the rest of MLB, he ranks at the 80th percentile in xwOBA, 88th in exit velocity, 81st in barrel rate, 83rd in hard-hit rate, and 88th in sprint speed. These aren’t opinions — they’re the numbers that validate what Ortiz saw when Chourio turned on that first-pitch fastball and didn’t flinch.
