Can Jackson Chourio Challenge for the MVP Award in 2025?

Jackson Chourio lit up the National League as a fresh faced 20-year-old, particularly after his initial adjustment phase. Chourio hit .303/.358/.525 from June 1st on, for a 142 WRC+. He crushed 16 homers and stole 15 bases during that span, although he wasn't especially efficient in swiping bags. Those numbers were exceptional for so young a player. However, if we put Chourio up against the best the league has to offer and remove the age caveat, he shows up more as a "really good" player than a league-leading one. In other words, he's not an MVP contender just yet. So, how can he get there? What does the next step consist of?

Pulling The Ball In The Air
Chourio's bat speed and dynamite hands allow him to catch the ball deep in the hitting zone and still clear the fences. He can catch it late and hit laser line drives to right field, but that's not the best or most consistent source of his power. 

As is true of most hitters, Chourio finds most of his pop to the pull side, but he struggled to fully tap into that potential for most of the season. He ranked 235th out of 288 qualified players in elevating the ball to the pull side in 2024, and 55th-lowest for overall ground ball rate. He sent some booming home runs out to left-center field and even took a chunk out of Mark Attanasio's beautiful new scoreboard, but if he can't access that power with more regularity, he may not quite reach the MVP conversation.

Chourio learns incredibly quickly, though. For a period of 2 and a half months he really started elevating the ball at a phenomenal rate:

Chourio went nuts in July and August, before dropping off a little later in the season. It was his first 162-game season, after all. He showed that he can go off when he finds that elevation. In this two-month stretch, Chourio put the ball in the air almost 58% of the time, a figure that would have taken him from 233rd to 4th place in "Air percentage," had he maintained it over a full season.

That's exactly what he's been doing during spring training. Chourio has put the ball in the air almost 60% of time and reaped a ton of extra-base hits as a reward. Most of this has been line-drive contract, something his swing plane is quite conducive to. It allows him to make strong contact with regularity, but he may not be the 40-home run threat many MVP's these days aspire to be.

What he can do, instead, is reach some elite overall extra-base hit totals. Chourio has the talent to put up the type of numbers Freddie Freeman achieved in 2023, with 59 doubles and 29 home runs. He may not walk as much as Freeman did, but it would put him in that .950 OPS range that you almost have to be in to claim an award likely contested by Elly De La Cruz, Juan Soto, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Corbin Carroll and more.

Can He Rack Up Steals?
Where Chourio may also have to improve is on the basepaths. Blessed with 97th-percentile speed, he wasn't as efficient or sharp in the stolen base department as one would expect. Chourio was anxious on base overall and seemed hesitant when generating leads. He averaged gaining just 2.6 feet from the base between the pitcher's first move and the pitch being released in all stolen-base opportunities, good for 404th out of 432 base runners.

An area that's often defined by inches rather than entire feet, Chourio's actual base running attempts usually started around a foot slower than the likes of Brice Turang and Garrett Mitchell, and almost two feet behind Christian Yelich. With experience (and comfort at the big-league level), Chourio's reads should improve and allow him to be far more productive in the stolen base department.

What End-of-Year Numbers Will Put Jackson Chourio In MVP Contention?
On the assumption that Shohei Ohtani doesn't pitch to his usual form while maintaining the same offensive output he managed in 2024 (which would make all of this a moot point), I'd guess Chourio will need to have the following:

• .300 batting average
• .550 slugging percentage
• 30+ home runs
• 40+ doubles
• 40+ Steals

If Chourio gets to spend significant time in center field and accrue WAR that way, he may not need to obtain quite such gaudy numbers, but assuming he stays in left field (and the direct comparison that would bring with Corbin Carroll and Juan Soto), he's going to require some outrageous production to stay in contention. If he can maintain his "elevated" air rates (see what I did there?), he just might manage it.

Do you think this is achievable for Jackson Chourio this year? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!