William Contreras - so far, so good

[Brock Beauchamp]

This was one of the biggest lingering questions for me heading into the season. Yeah, we all know he's an exciting young catcher and I make that trade 12 out of 10 times but with only one year of good hitting, I wasn't sure which version of the hitter we'd see in Milwaukee.

So far, he has hit for little to no power but given the sample size, that's not all that damning. His .400 BABIP won't hold, though, either. He's going to have to start hitting extra base knocks but looking at his StatCast data, I don't see a ton to be concerned about. He's not raking but as a catcher, he doesn't need to rake, especially given that framing number (which I find unlikely to hold as well, though the Brewers have a knack for improving their receivers).

Personally, I'd be quite satisfied with a 111 OPS+ (his current number) out of the catcher slot for a long time, even if we don't get the monster version of Contreras in a Brewers uniform.

[nate82]

As long as he puts up 100+ wRC+ seasons he should be fine.  At 100+ wRC+ he is basically an above average catcher offensively.  If he continues to improve defensively he should be an elite level catcher.  He may not be up there with Realmuto, Smith and Rutschman offensively but he should be in the next tier of really good catchers offensively. 

[TURBO]

All the fancy stats aside, I just really want him to add some power to his game. Be nice to hit a homer every now and again, maybe a couple doubles.

Chicks dig the long ball!

[nate82]

5 minutes ago, TURBO said:

All the fancy stats aside, I just really want him to add some power to his game. Be nice to hit a homer every now and again, maybe a couple doubles.

Chicks dig the long ball!

Last year he had 20 HR's and 14 doubles.  He has power we just haven't seen it yet.  He has 20+ HR potential.

[Brock Beauchamp]

40 minutes ago, nate82 said:

As long as he puts up 100+ wRC+ seasons he should be fine.  At 100+ wRC+ he is basically an above average catcher offensively.  If he continues to improve defensively he should be an elite level catcher.  He may not be up there with Realmuto, Smith and Rutschman offensively but he should be in the next tier of really good catchers offensively. 

Exactly. I’d be completely happy if he becomes a perpetual second tier catcher. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

14 hours ago, TURBO said:

All the fancy stats aside, I just really want him to add some power to his game. Be nice to hit a homer every now and again, maybe a couple doubles.

Chicks dig the long ball!

And I think he'll be fine in that regard. He's not hitting the ball particularly hard right now but he's not inducing weak contact, either.

Which is why the advanced stats are important. Things like exit velocity normalize much faster than doubles, home runs, or even OPS.

[wiguy94]

Judge (a stat guy at Baseball Prospectus) thinks that Contreras has shown enough to be considered a legit framer now because he has exceeded the small sample size probable error. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

39 minutes ago, wiguy94 said:

Judge (a stat guy at Baseball Prospectus) thinks that Contreras has shown enough to be considered a legit framer now because he has exceeded the small sample size probable error. 

If true, slow clap for the Brewers front office and coaching staff because that completely flips the script on Contreras. If he's an elite framer and a 130 wRC+ guy... that's literally Hall of Fame material after 7-8 years.

We're talking like Joe Mauer, Buster Posey kind of good.

[MrTPlush]

2 hours ago, wiguy94 said:

Judge (a stat guy at Baseball Prospectus) thinks that Contreras has shown enough to be considered a legit framer now because he has exceeded the small sample size probable error. 

Weren't our announcers hyping up Campusano as like the second best framer behind Contreras?

[markedman5]

Remember when Contreras was considered to be a subpar defensive catcher? Like before he was traded to the Brewers? 
 

 

[Harold Hutchison]

12 minutes ago, markedman5 said:

Remember when Contreras was considered to be a subpar defensive catcher? Like before he was traded to the Brewers? 
 

 

Same with Narvaez when he came to Milwaukee.

Too bad the bat got inconsistent.

[MoreTrife]

2 hours ago, MrTPlush said:

Weren't our announcers hyping up Campusano as like the second best framer behind Contreras?

No, I believe I heard the opposite. I believe Rottino was commenting negatively on Campusano.

[YelichPosse]

27 minutes ago, MoreTrife said:

No, I believe I heard the opposite. I believe Rottino was commenting negatively on Campusano.

Yea Rottino was mentioning several pitches that were called balls because of how he caught them and how he’s a work in progress 

[RWeeksFan23]

He really has 42nd percentile sprint speed? I would think that's surprisingly good for a catcher no?

[sveumrules]

5 hours ago, RWeeksFan23 said:

He really has 42nd percentile sprint speed? I would think that's surprisingly good for a catcher no?

Only 46 catchers with a minimum of 5 competitive runs on the StatCast leaderboard so far, but William’s sprint speed ranks 14th so bottom of the top third or so relative to other backstops.

At 26.4 ft/s he’s definitely closer to the top of the list (JTR at 28.5 ft/s) than he is to the bottom (Maldy at 21.8 ft/s).

Contreras also might seem a tick faster to our eyes too because we’ve seen so many slow catchers with Caratini (40th at 23.7 ft/s), Yaz (43rd at 22.9) and Omar (45th at 22.6) all joining Maldy among the slowest of the slow.

[nate82]

5 hours ago, sveumrules said:

Contreras also might seem a tick faster to our eyes too because we’ve seen so many slow catchers with Caratini (40th at 23.7 ft/s), Yaz (43rd at 22.9) and Omar (45th at 22.6) all joining Maldy among the slowest of the slow.

They are still calculating Johnny Estrada’s sprint speed.  He still hasn’t made it to 1B yet from 2008.