{"id":665241,"date":"2026-05-26T03:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T03:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/665241\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T03:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T03:02:08","slug":"willson-contreras-is-thriving-for-the-red-sox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/665241\/","title":{"rendered":"Willson Contreras Is Thriving For The Red Sox"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2025-26 offseason didn\u2019t have a defining blockbuster like the Kyle Tucker<\/a> trade in 2024-25 or the Juan Soto<\/a> deal the winter before. However, what the trade market lacked in top-end quality, it made up for in quantity, with no shortage of big names switching teams. The Cardinals were arguably the top sellers, dealing away Nolan Arenado<\/a>, Brendan Donovan<\/a>, Sonny Gray<\/a>, and Willson Contreras<\/a>, while the Red Sox were one of the most active buyers, picking up Gray and Contreras, along with Caleb Durbin<\/a> and Johan Oviedo<\/a>. It\u2019s still too early to crown any winners of the offseason\u2019s trades, but so far, Contreras is looking like one of the best pickups of the winter. Things aren\u2019t going so well for the Red Sox right now, but adding the slugging first baseman<\/a> is looking like one thing they definitely did right.<\/p>\n

Through 50 games, Contreras is hitting .281 with 11 home runs and 33 RBI. His .899 OPS, .393 wOBA, and 148 wRC+ all put him among the AL\u2019s top 10 qualified hitters. His .397 expected wOBA ranks fifth, trailing only Yordan Alvarez<\/a>, Aaron Judge<\/a>, Mike Trout<\/a>, and Ben Rice<\/a>. For what it\u2019s worth, his glove has also looked sharper in his sophomore season at first base. In 2025, he finished with -1 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) and a +4 Fielding Run Value (FRV). This year, he has a +3 DRS and a +4 FRV in less than half as many innings. The result of it all is 2.0 Wins Above Replacement, according to both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference. That\u2019s All-Star-caliber production, although fellow first basemen Rice, Nick Kurtz<\/a>, and Munetaka Murakami<\/a> will give Contreras tough competition when it comes to making this summer\u2019s AL All-Star squad.<\/p>\n

\"Red<\/p>\n

All-Star or not, there is no overstating how important Contreras has been to an otherwise floundering Red Sox offense. He leads the team in home runs, RBI, Win Probability Added, OPS, wRC+, and fWAR. Red Sox Nation held its collective breath earlier this month when Nick Martinez<\/a> hit Contreras on the hand<\/a> with a fastball, forcing him out of the game. Luckily, Contreras avoided any sort of serious injury. On the contrary, he\u2019s hit .349 with a 1.061 OPS and a 190 wRC+ in 11 games since. It\u2019s safe to say his hand is feeling just fine.<\/p>\n

Contreras has never played more than 138 games in a season or taken more than 563 trips to the plate. That\u2019s partly because he used to be a catcher and partly because he found himself on the injured list 10 times in the first 10 years of his career. This year, he and the Red Sox are hoping he can avoid the IL entirely for the first time in a full season since 2018. If he can, he\u2019s on track to blow past his previous career-highs in almost every counting stat category, including home runs, runs scored, and RBI. Of course, the rate stats are impressive too; his OPS, wRC+, and xwOBA would also be the best of his career. If Contreras keeps going at this pace, he\u2019ll finish with just over 6.0 Wins Above Replacement, according to both the FanGraphs and Baseball Reference models. That would be far and away the highest total of his big league tenure.<\/p>\n

Most players never have the privilege to say they were at their best in their mid-thirties. Indeed, in the last decade, only three position players have had a six-win season at age 34 or older, whether by fWAR or bWAR: Paul Goldschmidt<\/a> in 2022, Brandon Crawford<\/a> in 2021, and Adrian Beltr\u00e9<\/a> in 2016. Meanwhile, Crawford is the only hitter in the 21st century to have his first six-win season at age 34 or older. Contreras is hoping to join him.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, it\u2019s dangerous to extrapolate 50 games\u2019 worth of production over a full season. Contreras has played at a six-win pace over his last 50 games, but the 10 seasons and 1,000-plus games he played before this year are probably more representative of his true talent. Besides, the aging curve tells us he\u2019s much more likely to be worse at age 34 than he is to be better than ever. Yet, it\u2019s more fun to be optimistic, and there are some pretty compelling reasons to believe Contreras can keep this up.<\/p>\n

For one thing, he isn\u2019t catching anymore. Hopefully, that should help him remain stronger and healthier throughout the rest of the season. The underlying offensive data is also incredibly promising.\u00a0Over the first nine years of his career, Contreras had a pull-air rate of 13.3% (per Statcast). Then, in 2025, he increased his pull-air rate to nearly 20%. It was the first time in his career that he hit balls in the air to his pull side at a better-than-average rate. This season, his pull-air rate is up again. Just over a quarter of all his balls in play have been pulled in the air.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why that matters. The league-average wOBA on balls in play typically hovers around .360 to .370. When those balls in play are pulled in the air, that wOBA rises to the .730 to .740 range. What\u2019s more, Contreras has always been particularly successful with this type of contact. His .874 career wOBA on pulled balls in the air puts him in the league\u2019s 92nd percentile. The majority of hitters will succeed when they pull the ball in the air consistently, and Contreras can benefit more than most. His excellent numbers so far in 2026 are the proof.<\/p>\n

What makes this development even more encouraging for Contreras is that his swing speed is still elite. Generally speaking, bat speed starts to decline precipitously when a player reaches his thirties. Those older hitters sometimes increase their pull rate, which temporarily helps to cover for their declining strength. That\u2019s not what\u2019s going on for Contreras, at least not in any significant way. His average bat speed on non-pulled contact is down a bit, though it\u2019s still well above league average. Meanwhile, his bat speed on pulled contract is slightly higher than it was through May of last year (or the year before). Because he\u2019s pulling more of his contact overall, his average swing speed is right in line with where it\u2019s been the last two years. Out of 218 qualified swingers, only 14 have a higher average swing speed than Contreras. He may be 34, but he\u2019s swinging like a much younger man.<\/p>\n

Simply put, there\u2019s no question Contreras has earned his success to date. He may not keep hitting at quite this level over the next four months, but he\u2019s already given himself a strong head start. As long as he stays healthy, there\u2019s a very good chance this ends up as the best season of an already highly successful career.<\/p>\n

Images courtesy of Bob DeChiara and Jeff Curry, Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025-26 offseason didn\u2019t have a defining blockbuster like the Kyle Tucker trade in 2024-25 or the Juan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[99,7648],"class_list":["post-665241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-sports","tag-willson-contreras"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}