His Power Utterly Missing, William Contreras Has Gone Searching for It

There have been bigger problems further down the lineup card, but the player who has most severely underachieved this season for the Milwaukee Brewers is William Contreras—and it's not all that close. Contreras is controlling the strike zone tolerably well, and therefore, he's running a .361 OBP. In 144 plate appearances, though, he has just five extra-base hits, and all five were clustered in a six-game stretch from April 8-13.

Contreras had never before gone even 10 games or 50 plate appearances between extra-base hits in the majors. Right now, he's in a drought stretching back three weeks, running 19 games and 83 plate appearances. He's slugging an anemic .339—and unfortunately, that word feels very much apropos. The sturdy Contreras, always a bastion of fearsome, hard-won strength and the attendant power, is down 1.8 miles per hour in swing speed and 3.6 mph in exit velocity this season.

Of all the things one might worry Contreras would lose—plate discipline, or the ability to make consistent contact, or the capacity for hitting the ball in the air that he found last summer—he's misplaced the least likely thing: his pop. It's strange, too, because he's lifting and pulling the ball more often during his latest dry spell—the opposite of what we'd expect. When he's going poorly, usually, it's because he's hitting too many grounders or not using the pull field enough. Right now, while he's certainly not launching it optimally, he's in the same ranges on each measurement that he was in at his best last July and August.

Earlier this spring, we discussed Contreras's tendency to "step in the bucket," in old coaching parlance. He opens up much more with his stride than any hitting coach would advise, and more than almost any hitter in the majors. That was happening last year, though, so it's unlikely to be the culprit for his struggles this season.

Nonetheless, it looks like Contreras himself (or one of the Brewers' hitting coaches whom he trusts, perhaps) views his setup as having been part of what got him into this rut. At the very least, it's clear that changing it is a big part of how they're going about fixing him (or so they hope).

Here's where Contreras set up in March and April, against right-handed pitchers, and where his stride took him.

There are limits to what these graphics really tell us, though. It's important, too, to watch the operation in real life.

We can't blame the swing mechanics, exactly, for this being a weakly hit ball. This is a swing decision problem. Watch Contreras's feet, though. Notice that toe tap, then the outward-angled step and turn. That's been his standard movement pattern for most of the last year. Contreras has always tried to utilize multiple swings and moves to attack various pitches, but starting around midseason last year, that toe tap-and-hinge move has been his go-to. It began to create problems for him, though, as teams recognized that tendency and started pounding him away, away, away. The move is designed to help him turn on the ball from the middle of the plate in. If he reaches out for pitches on the outer third from the hitting position he gets to using this move, he's doomed to weak contact off the end of the bat. Here's another clip from early this season that's equally illustrative, because it yields similarly underwhelming contact despite being a more hittable pitch.

That's true, at least, if he works from the same old spot in the batter's box. One way Contreras appears to have tried to cover the outer third is to stack himself more tightly onto the plate. Here's a graphic to match the last one, showing Contreras's setup and stride against right-handed pitchers—only this one is for May, rather than April.

Something, if you'll pardon the pun, is afoot. Contreras is much closer to the plate, but his stride has also changed—not least because he's spread out quite a bit more in the box. These graphics are composites, though, and the trick of it is, no composite or average measurement can capture what Contreras is doing right now. That's because he's changing multiple things, from one plate appearance to another.

Here's a swing from Friday night's contest with the Cubs.

Spread out very wide in the box, Contreras has virtually gotten rid of his stride altogether here. He lifts his front foot, but it doesn't go anywhere. There's no complicated lower half here, at all. This particular swing came on a two-strike count, and this kind of stance and lower-half adjustment is somewhat common throughout the league in such counts, but Contreras wasn't doing this early this season, and he's been doing it on some occasions even in earlier or more advantageous counts over the last two weeks.

Here's a clip from Saturday.

This is more like a modified version of his typical move. He's tapping the toe, then taking a very purposeful stride. There's much less counterrotation to the initial movement, though, and the stepping in the bucket is gone. He's still crowding the plate more. With this combination of starting point and swing, Contreras has the outer edge covered much better—but, alas, this pitch hummed inside on him, right where his old, step-in-the-bucket move would have allowed him to tear into it.

Another from Saturday shows how extreme he's been getting with these setups.

This is the most we've seen him crowd the plate, maybe ever. His toes are on the chalk of the inner edge of the box. He's also got that impatient foot, waiting to fire—and when it does, when he thinks he has the timing cue he wants, it doesn't just turn up and down, but nor does it come back for a tap. It's a standard-issue, high, one-phase leg kick. He's trying everything, from everywhere. None of it is really working.

If anything, he's making the opposite directional adjustment against lefties. Here's the graphic of his setup and stride for March and April against southpaws.

You know what that version of Contreras looks like, by now. We won't review it right this second. Here's the same chart for May.

He's still a bit more spread-out than in the past, but not to the same extent as against righties. He's not stacking himself on the plate against lefties; he doesn't seem worried that they're going to work him away. Meanwhile, this might be the most extreme we've seen that stride be—only he's doing it mostly without the toe tap. This is the clean-pickup leg kick, but with the long stride and exaggerated opening-up of the hips and feet that we saw before his crisis really began.

Contreras has to hit for power. The Brewers can't be a strong offense without him doing so. Right now, he has no power whatsoever. The above is his very best swing under current conditions, and it was a single that never had a chance to be anything else. Watching him experiment so wildly is concerning, because it seems like he's hunting for something that a hitter like him should never misplace for all that long. His swing speed is down. Hard contact is relatively rare, and never has much lift to it. Moving around the box, standing differently and changing how he moves within it are valuable ways for a hitter to evolve and to manage key situations. At the moment, though, it just feels like Contreras is a cornered creature, fighting for survival and out of contact with his confidence, as much as with his swing. The Brewers need him to find a comfort zone and take some better swings, very soon.