William Contreras Exceeds Early Expectations

Expand

Photo via William Contreras - Instagram

William Contreras

William Contreras

The Brewers overcame a rough day offensively to pick up a 1-0 win over the Padres on Sunday, and it was the first time all season an opponent has been able to keep one of Milwaukee’s top offensive performers in check. 

The organization knew they were shopping for an offensive upgrade at catcher when they added William Contreras in a highly-praised offseason trade, but they couldn’t have known how much of a difference he’d make right away. Contreras started his Milwaukee tenure with at least one hit in his first eleven games, tied for the third longest streak in the majors this season and the fourth longest by any Brewer in the last four years. Even after being held hitless on Sunday Contreras is batting .318 on the season and has also drawn six walks in his first 12 games, raising his on-base percentage to .400.

Across baseball catchers are hitting a little better in 2023 than they did in 2022, with a .682 on-base plus slugging percentage as compared to .663 last year. Even after that small bump, however, Contreras is easily outperforming his peers at the plate with a .764 mark. Perhaps more importantly, he’s been a major offensive upgrade from the .608 OPS Brewers catchers posted last season.

All of this success is in a relatively small sample, of course, so it’s possible that luck has influenced Contreras’ results to this point. He’s batting .400 on balls in play this season, which is almost 70 points higher than his career mark and much higher than might be predicted based on the quality of his contact. FanGraphs’ expected batting average stat attempts to predict the batting average a player would have in a luck-neutral environment, just based on the type and quality of their batted balls. They have Contreras expected to bat .255, down 63 points from his actual numbers. Even if he does regress to that level, however, it’ll still be a major upgrade offensively from his predecessors.

Behind the Plate

The biggest question surrounding Contreras when he joined the Brewers was his defense, which was somewhat suspect last season with Atlanta. Again, the samples are small, but the early returns suggest Contreras has outperformed expectations there too: FanGraphs actually credits him with more defensive value than offensive value to this point. Baseball Prospectus, widely credited with being one of the pioneers in evaluating catcher defense, also suggests he’s been above average behind the plate to this point. He has already been charged with three errors, the most of any National League catcher, but on the whole the early data would seem to suggest his defense is more than good enough for a player who contributes at his level offensively.

The Brewers’ satisfaction with Contreras shows in his workload. He’s already been behind the plate in eleven of their first 16 games despite the fact that last season’s primary catcher, Victor Caratini, is also still on the roster. Caratini also has seven hits in his first five games this season and has a .550 on-base percentage, but his opportunities have been limited as Contreras has claimed most of the playing time at his position.

Contreras has also never spent a full season as a major league catcher, however, and his workload to this point puts him on pace to join some relatively rare company. He’s on pace to catch 111 games this year, a figure only six catchers reached in all of MLB in 2022. There have only been two times in the last eight seasons where the Brewers had a catcher behind the plate that often and one of them is something of a cautionary tale: Omar Narváez caught in 111 games (100 as a starter) in 2021 and his offense declined sharply as the season went along. He batted .301 with a .391 on-base and .474 slugging in his first 57 games and made the All Star team but hit just .239/.300/.344 in the same categories in his final 66 appearances.

It’s almost certainly too early to say if William Contreras is destined for future superstardom or even an All Star berth, but he’s certainly held up his share of the bargain to this point. The Brewers got Contreras in one of the most critically acclaimed moves of the winter, and the deal still looks pretty good a month into the season.