Baseball brings both horror and odd silver linings from unexpected places. In just the last handful of days, Roman Anthony’s been handed both.
The first is the most obvious as the hand injury Anthony battled all year resurfaced and wrecked his first playoff appearance in merciless fashion. He now faces a long offseason of rehab and questions he won’t be able to answer for multiple months. In almost every way, the ending to his 2026 is cruel, harsh and final.
But leave it to the baseball gods to follow up that nastiness with an odd, but also rather ideal ray of hope. Enter Jackson Chourio, who yesterday came up in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 2 of the NLDS with the bases juiced and Mason Miller on the mound. After a highly entertaining battle, Chourio came through on a 2-2 pitch with this game-winner that sent the Brewer crowd into bedlam:
So what does that have to do with Roman Anthony? Well, just one year ago, Chourio faced a very similar set of frustrating circumstances that largely mirror what Anthony is dealing with today.
The curious correlations started back in July of 2025, when Chourio suffered a right hamstring injury on this triple against the Cubs:
Chourio was initially listed as day-to-day (that should sound familiar), but ended up missing several weeks (that should also sound familiar).
Now so far, the similarities are very rudimentary. Anthony, like Chourio, is a 22-year-old hitting stud born in 2004. Anthony, like Chourio, is an outfielder who plays predominantly in left but can move to other slots when the team needs it. Anthony, like Chourio, signed an 8-year contract extension. And Anthony, like Chourio, suffered a frustrating injury that started as day-to-day and then became something much, much more.
But here’s where the similarities get crazy. Do you know what happened shortly after Chourio went on the IL last year? His team went on a 14-game winning streak, which is wildly similar to the 15-game winning streak the Red Sox went on this summer.
Do you know the date Chourio came back from his injury last year? August 30th. Do you know the date Anthony came back from his injury this year? August 30th. Both Anthony and Chourio then proceeded to play in exactly 25 regular season games upon returning, and then had their old injury resurface in Game 1 of the postseason, where they each had to leave early. Here’s the Brewers announcing Chourio’s departure 12 months ago.
Now the difference is the 2025 Brewers went much deeper into the postseason than the 2026 Red Sox. So Chourio was actually in the lineup again in the NLCS, where he unfortunately had to leave another game with that reoccurring hamstring injury.
Either way, if you check the social media archives, you’ll find hundreds of comments from dimwitted imbeciles calling Chourio soft, made of glass, uncompetitive, and questioning if he had anything to play for after the Brewers gave him an an 8-year, $82 million contract extension. Basically, you’d be reading the same trash many people are saying about Roman Anthony right now, which is suddenly oddly comforting in an extremely bizarre way after what Chourio did on Sunday.
Now unfortunately, there’s no guarantee the story keeps following the same set of parallel tracks, and even if it does, we have to wait a year to get the payoff. For now, Roman Anthony, Red Sox fans, and potentially the entire sport face a long, grueling winter ahead, and maybe even a delayed start to next season. (Chourio by the way also had a delayed start to his next season, but that was for a fractured hand, which given everything else here is kind of nuts.)
But at the very least, it’s nice to know the pot of gold is sitting out there somewhere. Chourio’s heroics provide a beacon of light in a moment filled with uncertainty and darkness. So even though it’s a million miles away and there’s no guarantee we ever get there, it can serve as our north star for the time being. Who knows? Maybe a year from now we can circle back and note one more satisfying similarity in this silly string of surrealness.
