2 Cardinals who’ve earned an apology from their doubters, and 1 not quite there

Cardinal who hasn’t quite earned his apology yet: Willson Contreras

Willson Contreras has been through a tough year in his first with the Cardinals. After being signed to a lucrative deal and making the trek from the Cubs to a team he considered a longtime rival, Contreras was demoted and brought back to his role all in the span of a few weeks.

That seems to have had a lot more to do with Oli Marmol not knowing what he wanted to do with Contreras, but there was reason for the demotion. Contreras wasn’t doing well offensively at the plate and he was also struggling to frame pitches while also committing a heap of errors as the backstop.

Pitching was struggling, too, and with mostly the same staff, Contreras was the one thing that had changed from 2022 to 2023 to point fingers at. 

After rattling off three errors in April, Contreras hasn’t had one in May or June. So there are some positives.

But while he’s performing OK behind the plate, he hasn’t earned his apology because coming up to bat, he’s been continuously unreliable. His OPS is .656 and his on base percentage is over 50 points down from last year. The last time Contreras had a consecutive game with hits was May 18, and he’s gone on a five-game slump without a hit, too. His chase rate is in the 18th percentile, down from 30th last year. His whiff rate was in the 30th, its down to 12th this year.

He’s never been stellar in those metrics, but he’s even worse now than he used to be.

It’s easy for Cards fans to turn on Contreras. They hated him for years in Chicago! Now, they might hate him even if he’s wearing the jersey they prefer if he can’t turn things around.