Before It Costs Brewers Even More, William Contreras Needs to Clean Up His Pitch-Blocking

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Because the Brewers' pitchers made the big pitches they needed to make, it never became a front-and-center issue. Because the team won both games, neither game will be remembered for any of the three moments. But they still happened. Three times in two games, a Brewers hurler uncorked a wild pitch, and William Contreras was unable to keep it from getting past him.

It happened in the top of the fourth inning of Game 1, when Jacob Misiorowski cut loose a curveball harder and sharper than most sliders. To be fair, that made it a difficult play. Contreras couldn't make it, though. It was a strikeout, but it wasn't an out. Instead, it might have sparked a pivotal rally.

Misiorowski then induced a ground ball, though, and got a double play to escape the jam before it really became one. No harm done. The next inning, though, it happened again. Aaron Ashby threw a wicked breaking ball, and Contreras couldn't get in front of it. Two runners advanced. That one, too, could have been a game-breaker.

Ashby, too, made the pitch he needed to work around the issue. Contreras also deserves some relief, in this case, because the pickle the Crew were in at that juncture would have been far worse, if not for his superb throw to nail Dustin Harris trying to steal earlier in the inning. His luck would run out the next day, though.

In Game 2, Logan Henderson threw one of his extremely deceptive (but not precisely located) changeups, and it fooled everyone—including his catcher.

The run that that miss moved into scoring position did eventually score, and it made the game a tighter and tougher thing for the Brewers the rest of the way. All three of these were (rightly) called wild pitches, so by the box score's reckoning, Contreras did nothing wrong. In reality, though, there's a little bit of responsibility on each party, every time the ball goes to the screen.

For most of his career, Contreras has been a good pitch blocker. Statcast credited him with 7 blocks above average (worth 2 runs in runner advancements denied) from 2023 through 2025. This season, though, he was one of the worst backstops in the league at actually being a backstop. His -7 Blocks Above Average (and -2 Blocking Runs) were better than the marks of only six other qualifying catchers. He's missed a lot of balls that he would have gotten in past years. In fact, compare that Ashby pitch above to this one, from last season.

A few things have changed. In the video above, note the way Contreras has his shoulders turned at an angle, whereas this year, he's more square to the incoming pitch. The latter sounds like a good thing, but that angle he had last year is the proper way to set up in the right-knee-down stance he employs most of the time. That turn gives him more ways to glide toward a ball that's moving quickly to his glove side, without coming up from the ground too much.

It's probably a silly suggestion, because for most of us, the way Contreras sets up to receive the ball is a physical impossibility, or a nice (but fading) memory. If you can, though, get into that position: right knee down, with your foot behind you; left leg outstretched to the side and slightly forward; leaning forward slightly with your torso. It's not easy to move at all from that position, unless you're a strong and flexible athlete. Try moving fluidly, though—particularly to your left. It requires a kind of rocking of your hips, turning under control. Do it without rising out of that squat. You can only do so if you're set up correctly, with your hips and your back engaged but not locked into place. It's incredibly difficult.

Right now. Contreras just can't do all of that power steering—not fast enough, and not with enough control of each small movement that makes up the larger one. He can't do what we just watched him do last year, on balls like the one from Ashby in Game 1. He can't rock his body over the fulcrum of his right hip and thigh to reach for a ball to the backhand side, without lunging and jabbing instead of reaching through the ball to stab it. He can't move quickly on balls that miss by a huge margin, even if he can get an early read that tells him that's happening.

Some of this is, surely, about fatigue. Contreras has caught more innings than any other player in the majors since the start of 2025, counting regular season and postseason—and he caught some in the World Baseball Classic, for good measure. That he would be slightly less than his best in at least some facet of the game right now only makes sense, and this is one place where we'd expect to see that wear and tear show up. Some of it, however, is also about technique. There are adjustments he can make to reduce the chances of balls getting past him for the balance of this series and beyond. Hopefully, he and the Brewers coaching staff are working on them, because these are the small things that make or break teams with real chances to win the World Series.