An Update on William Contreras's Pitch Framing in 2024

We could try to ascribe William Contreras's struggles with pitch framing in 2024 to the remarkably heavy workload he's born so far this season, but alas, we checked in early in the season, and he was already showing this skill erosion. He's never broken out of that pattern. Last year, Contreras came from Atlanta, worked under the expert tutelage of the Brewers' catching instructors, and became an excellent framer. Unfortunately, the improvement doesn't seem to have stuck.

To break this down and ensure that we're looking at what really matters, let's start by eliminating some of the unhelpful data. I looked up Contreras's (and other catchers') framing data on four-seam fastballs, sinkers, curveballs and slurves only. Why? Because framing should not really be part of the goal when a catcher calls a slider, a sweeper, a changeup, a splitter, or (surprisingly, to me) a cutter. Those pitches (the cutter excepted) are meant to generate chases when they're outside the zone. They're not geared toward getting called strikes; they're thrown in pursuit of whiffs or weak contact. League-level data affirms this, too, and in reviewing that data, I was convinced to lump the cutter in with them, because that pitch induces swings both inside and outside the strike zone and is thrown with a similar distribution of called-strike probabilities to the rest of this suite of chase pitches.

So, let's talk solely about how Contreras frames the framing-forward pitch types. So far this year, 66 catchers qualify for TruMedia's leaderboard in catching metrics, having caught at least 648 plate appearances or at least four PAs per team game. Among them, Contreras ranks 57th in framing runs above average. Last year, he was 4.1 runs better than average at framing those pitch types. In less than two months of 2024 action, he's been 2.8 runs worse than the average backstop on them. He's leaking value everywhere.

One problem has been an inability to set a good outside edge against right-handed batters. 

In some cases, it's as simple as the way he sets up. Here, he's too far outside, giving the umpire lots of space to see the ball moving away and not looking believable, based on body position.

He's also wrestling that ball a little bit, after getting so good at smoothly extending through the incoming pitch last season. Against left-handed hitters, he's been better, overall, with more unreliable weak spots.

Without question, though, he's also lost some calls against them, and the principal problem is that he's letting the ball beat him to its spot. Framing is anticipation and smooth movement. Contreras doesn't have that this year, the way he did in 2023.

He's swatting at the ball there, which we rarely saw in 2023, especially when a pitcher hit their spot the way Jared Koenig did here. Be it a function of fatigue, Charlie Greene's fairy dust wearing off, or more focus on his offensive game at the expense of some of the defensive skills he learned, Contreras just isn't winning in this area of the game in 2024. If I had to pick a most likely issue, I would lean toward fatigue, because there are some pitches where his setup looks confused, rushed, or distracted, and given the intensity and diligence with which we know he approaches his work, I chalk that up to being too tired to sustain his usual focus.

Maybe that swipe of the dirt near the feet of José Altuve is meant to deceive him about where Contreras was setting up. That's part of the game of cat and mouse a catcher plays with opposing hitters, to be sure. In this case, though, all it succeeded in doing was leaving Contreras off-balance and unable to receive the ball cleanly.

The Brewers need good pitch framing, and they're not getting it--not from Contreras, and not from Gary Sánchez. They've survived just fine so far, but it's been very difficult sledding at times. In both 2011 and 2018, the Crew had a superstar win the MVP award, partially because they won the NL Central in each of those seasons. Contreras won't win the 2024 trophy unless the team claims that crown again, and if they're to do that, they need him to fix his faltering framing.