How William Contreras Can Go Nuclear in 2024

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Milwaukee Brewers made a savvy trade in December 2022, but it went from good to great thanks to their player development work. Can their star catcher take yet another step forward in 2024?

Image courtesy of © Reggie Hildred-USA TODAY Sports

Much was made of William Contreras's night-to-day transformation from fringy backstop to pitch-framing ace in 2023, but that was a relatively small surprise. Over nearly a decade, the Brewers have earned a reputation as (perhaps) the best team in baseball at training the subtle and supremely valuable skill of catcher defense, and their coaches worked tirelessly with Contreras to make that magic happen for him in his first year with a new team.

At the plate, though, Contreras more quietly underwent a similarly significant set of changes. They didn't turn him from a very good offensive catcher into a superstar, but they might have laid the groundwork for just that kind of leap forward in 2024. Let's take a closer look.

As Brewers fans already know, Contreras did adjust and evolve at the plate. It just felt more like a change in style than a radical increase in overall effectiveness. After posting a .278/.354/.506 line for Atlanta in limited time in 2022, he batted .289/.367/.457 in a robust 611 plate appearances for the Brewers last year. He cut his strikeout rate down from 27 percent to 20 percent, and he drew more walks, but he didn't hit for nearly as much power as he had for the team who seems as far ahead of the curve as anyone in baseball when it comes to power generation.

Below the surface, there are indicators that that could change in 2024. Contreras reorganized his strike zone and improved his selectivity last year, and that could be how he consolidates his skills into a true superstar breakout. Specifically, the secret lies in his approach to pitches out away from him.

On pitches over the middle third of the plate and further in (including those above and below the zone and off the plate inside), little changed for Contreras in 2023. He had virtually identical swing rates (50 percent) and chase rates outside the zone (28 percent) in 2022 and 2023 on those pitches. He actually hit those balls harder, on average, in 2023, and had a higher 90th-percentile exit velocity, too. He'd elevated them a bit more with Atlanta, so his OPS from the middle third in dropped from 1.029 in 2022 to .906 in 2023, but that latter number is still a good one.

Much more importantly, though, Contreras got more selective on the outer third, and on pitches off the plate altogether. His swing rate on those pitches dropped from 39 to 34 percent, and his chase rate on non-strikes from 29 percent to 21 percent. 

Contreras seemed to see the ball away better in 2023. He stayed through the ball and used the whole field much better. In 2022, he often rolled over on those pitches, a byproduct of his aggressiveness and effort to lift the ball to the pull field.

In 2023, he got much better at shooting the ball the opposite way. That's why, despite more ground balls and a lower average exit velocity, he had the same BABIP on pitches away from him as he'd had in his final year with Atlanta.

Contreras's OPS on pitches on the outer third and beyond rose from .625 to .663 in 2023, but that's only a small portion of the story. He's a hitter who does much better when he attacks pitches from the middle of the plate in, so the most important variable isn't sheer production on pitches away, but the frequency with which he's able to avoid letting the plate appearance be settled on such offerings. 

Thanks to being more patient when pitchers went there last year, Contreras brought the share of his plate appearances resolved on the middle or inner thirds up from 55.3 percent to 63.2 percent in 2023. Given the disparity in his performance based on pitch location, that's huge. 

The next step, of course, is to get the bat head out a bit better and catch the lower half of the ball with it on those meaty pitches. If he can show the superior plate discipline and contact skills he developed in 2023 and bring back some of the power he demonstrated in 2022, he can morph into the true, slugging middle-of-the-order megastar the Brewers need, and mitigate the risk the team incurs by having Christian Yelich (with his own ground-ball tendencies) locked in as one of the best hitters in their lineup. Ordinarily, that's much easier said than done, but given what we already saw Contreras do in terms of honing his approach last year, maybe it's not so crazy in this case.

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What's a reasonable hope for Contreras's output in 2024? Do you foresee a rapid consolidation of his skills? Sound off in the comments.

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[Playing Catch]

What's exciting is that he turned 26 a couple of months ago. It is probably better than 50/50 that we have yet to see his best season with the bat. So there's no reason not to expect big things from our star catcher.