Article: What on Earth Was William Contreras Doing in the Eighth Inning Tuesday?

[Matthew Trueblood]

A tough start from Eric Lauer put the Brewers behind the 8-ball early on Tuesday night, but by the bottom of the eighth inning, the team had a golden opportunity to salvage the game and stop their miniature skid. That's when William Contreras came up with the worst idea in the history of hitting.

Image courtesy of © MARK HOFFMAN/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL / USA TODAY NETWORK

In the bottom of the eighth inning, with the Detroit Tigers leading 4-3, the Brewers mustered the smallest amount of opportunity that can credibly be called a rally. Luke Voit led off the frame with a double, and was replaced by pinch-runner Blake Perkins at second base. Willy Adames and Rowdy Tellez each put up a fight, but Tigers reliever Mason Englert struck them both out. That brought up William Contreras, who represented the go-ahead run, with two outs. The game hung very much in the balance.

Tigers manager A.J. Hinch called upon Jason Foley to take over for Englert. Foley is a right-hander who throws as hard as 98 miles per hour at times, with a breaking ball that boasts impressive movement but seems to be beyond his real control. Hinch must have decided he wanted to bust Contreras inside, and that does seem to be sound advice for opponents so far this year. The Brewers' new catcher has done many things well, but he's not successfully pulling the ball or hitting the inside pitch yet.

Contreras, to his credit, anticipated that plan. Here's where he set up for the 0-1 pitch from Foley, after fouling off an inside sinker for strike one.

This is when the trouble started. See, Foley missed with the 0-1, low, but it was another sinker, and Contreras got too excited about what he had just figured out. Here's where he set up for the 1-1 offering.

Contreras likes to extend his arms. He's not a great hitter when pitchers crowd him. He was clearly trying to create some extra space, inviting Foley to keep coming inside but leaving himself room to extend his arms on that kind of pitch. All sound logic! Clever, and potentially delightful, if it works. It needs to be subtle, but games have been won by hitters doing just this type of thing.

Only, Contreras went way, way past subtlety. Here's where he was as a 2-2 slider (the only non-sinker he would see in the entire plate appearance) came in.

Remember in the Clooney/Pitt version of Ocean's 11, when the plan the team had formed to blow the power to their target casino was foiled by an error on the part of some construction workers who did exactly what the crew had plotted? They accidentally exposed their own weaknesses, and that led them to close it. It's the same thing with this slider. Foley missed his target badly, but if he and catcher Jake Rogers had somehow failed to notice Contreras backing away from the plate, they couldn't possibly have done so after that pitch. Here's a ball a foot inside, that would still have ended up on the end of Contreras's bat if he had swung at it.

Surely, then, it was time to give up the ghost and move back to Contreras's original position in the box--or at least to pretend to. One could always bail out with the front hip, get going early. He just had to at least invite Foley back into that area.

You probably know where this is really going, though.

I think Contreras would have had to tape two of his bats together, end-to-end, to reach this pitch. It's right down the middle. He should have swung, though, because he might have hit Hinch's cap in the Tigers dugout as he did, and maybe they would have called manager interference or something. It's a good thing Contreras has already made an All-Star team and looks like a long-term contributor to this team, because the row of seats he basically sat in to watch this pitch are pricey seats. 

I can, loosely, see what he was going for here. Until that last pitch, the Tigers pounded him with a truly shocking relentlessness, going with sinker after sinker inside. He even made decent contact on an aggressive swing on one of them, well off the plate, fouling the pitch away. 

I can say that. I can acknowledge some rational basis for some version of what happened. But this wasn't rational. This was baseball breaking for a minute. The Brewers blew their last real chance to win this game because their hitter tried to walk backward around the world and sneak over to first base without anyone noticing, six inches at a time. 

Blame Blake Perkins, maybe. He's been lousy so far, especially in the field, and bad stuff just seems to happen to the team whenever he gets involved. As soon as he took over at second base, maybe Brewers hitters started seeing a mysterious shimmer in the air all around second base, where whatever ghosts haunt Perkins lurk and drift, and none of them could focus. Maybe we should blame the hitting coaches. Did they show Contreras a heat map of Foley drilling the inside corner with sinkers on the dugout iPad while he warmed up? Did they remind him he could die if the ball hit him wrong and just scare him witless? In all likelihood, we'll never know. Here's all I will say, with confidence: It was a profoundly weird and frustrating way to lose a profoundly mundane and frustrating game.

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[MrTPlush]

It was a stupid idea and embarrassing one of our best hitters was playing around in the 8th inning like that.

Sure, now he can't throw an inside pitch, but now you can't reach the outside of the plate. All he did is make himself completely uncomfortable at the plate and have absolutely no awareness of where the plate was. He should have done what he has done his entire career, try to fight off inside pitches until one misses. 

[Team Canada]

I think you could axe the last paragraph and not lose anything from the article.

[TURBO]

I simply can't read or take anything seriously that a Cubs fan writes about the Brewers.  I just can't...

[Outlander]

15 minutes ago, Team Canada said:

I think you could axe the last paragraph and not lose anything from the article.

With you there, very strange last paragraph.

[Samurai Bucky]

Do things change if Adames sacrifices Voit to third?

[wiguy94]

3 hours ago, Matthew Trueblood said:

A tough start from Eric Lauer put the Brewers behind the 8-ball early on Tuesday night, but by the bottom of the eighth inning, the team had a golden opportunity to salvage the game and stop their miniature skid. That's when William Contreras came up with the worst idea in the history of hitting.

author-tracker.gifauthor-tracker.gif

Image courtesy of © MARK HOFFMAN/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL / USA TODAY NETWORK

In the bottom of the eighth inning, with the Detroit Tigers leading 4-3, the Brewers mustered the smallest amount of opportunity that can credibly be called a rally. Luke Voit led off the frame with a double, and was replaced by pinch-runner Blake Perkins at second base. Willy Adames and Rowdy Tellez each put up a fight, but Tigers reliever Mason Englert struck them both out. That brought up William Contreras, who represented the go-ahead run, with two outs. The game hung very much in the balance.

Tigers manager A.J. Hinch called upon Jason Foley to take over for Englert. Foley is a right-hander who throws as hard as 98 miles per hour at times, with a breaking ball that boasts impressive movement but seems to be beyond his real control. Hinch must have decided he wanted to bust Contreras inside, and that does seem to be sound advice for opponents so far this year. The Brewers' new catcher has done many things well, but he's not successfully pulling the ball or hitting the inside pitch yet.

Contreras, to his credit, anticipated that plan. Here's where he set up for the 0-1 pitch from Foley, after fouling off an inside sinker for strike one.

This is when the trouble started. See, Foley missed with the 0-1, low, but it was another sinker, and Contreras got too excited about what he had just figured out. Here's where he set up for the 1-1 offering.

Contreras likes to extend his arms. He's not a great hitter when pitchers crowd him. He was clearly trying to create some extra space, inviting Foley to keep coming inside but leaving himself room to extend his arms on that kind of pitch. All sound logic! Clever, and potentially delightful, if it works. It needs to be subtle, but games have been won by hitters doing just this type of thing.

Only, Contreras went way, way past subtlety. Here's where he was as a 2-2 slider (the only non-sinker he would see in the entire plate appearance) came in.

Remember in the Clooney/Pitt version of Ocean's 11, when the plan the team had formed to blow the power to their target casino was foiled by an error on the part of some construction workers who did exactly what the crew had plotted? They accidentally exposed their own weaknesses, and that led them to close it. It's the same thing with this slider. Foley missed his target badly, but if he and catcher Jake Rogers had somehow failed to notice Contreras backing away from the plate, they couldn't possibly have done so after that pitch. Here's a ball a foot inside, that would still have ended up on the end of Contreras's bat if he had swung at it.

Surely, then, it was time to give up the ghost and move back to Contreras's original position in the box--or at least to pretend to. One could always bail out with the front hip, get going early. He just had to at least invite Foley back into that area.

You probably know where this is really going, though.

I think Contreras would have had to tape two of his bats together, end-to-end, to reach this pitch. It's right down the middle. He should have swung, though, because he might have hit Hinch's cap in the Tigers dugout as he did, and maybe they would have called manager interference or something. It's a good thing Contreras has already made an All-Star team and looks like a long-term contributor to this team, because the row of seats he basically sat in to watch this pitch are pricey seats. 

I can, loosely, see what he was going for here. Until that last pitch, the Tigers pounded him with a truly shocking relentlessness, going with sinker after sinker inside. He even made decent contact on an aggressive swing on one of them, well off the plate, fouling the pitch away. 

I can say that. I can acknowledge some rational basis for some version of what happened. But this wasn't rational. This was baseball breaking for a minute. The Brewers blew their last real chance to win this game because their hitter tried to walk backward around the world and sneak over to first base without anyone noticing, six inches at a time. 

Blame Blake Perkins, maybe. He's been lousy so far, especially in the field, and bad stuff just seems to happen to the team whenever he gets involved. As soon as he took over at second base, maybe Brewers hitters started seeing a mysterious shimmer in the air all around second base, where whatever ghosts haunt Perkins lurk and drift, and none of them could focus. Maybe we should blame the hitting coaches. Did they show Contreras a heat map of Foley drilling the inside corner with sinkers on the dugout iPad while he warmed up? Did they remind him he could die if the ball hit him wrong and just scare him witless? In all likelihood, we'll never know. Here's all I will say, with confidence: It was a profoundly weird and frustrating way to lose a profoundly mundane and frustrating game.

 

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Thank you for this article. I thought he was way further away from the plate than normal lol.