Brand new info on Willson Contreras demotion vindicates Oli Marmol

Willson Contreras was demoted by the Cardinals earlier this season, losing his starting catcher job. More details on why are a horrible look for the catcher. 

Willson Contreras has had a miserable first year with the St. Louis Cardinals. After signing a contract with the Cardinals this offseason and making the trek over from the division rival Chicago Cubs down to Missouri, he has struggled both behind the plate and offensively. His OPS+ is 84 this year after sitting at 127 last year.

Early in the year, Contreras was removed from his role as the starting catcher, the very role that the Cardinals had just signed him to replace longtime star Yadier Molina for. At the time, it reeked of poor managing and coaching from Oli Marmol and his staff and perhaps even scapegoating Contreras, but the more we learn, the more it feels like Contreras dug his own grave.

Clearly, he was entirely unprepared to be a Cardinal this season. Marmol hasn’t made all the right decisions this year, but removing Contreras from his starting catcher role for a time was clearly justified.

Michael Kay reports that Willson Contreras was calling pitches that pitchers don’t throw

Michael Kay, play-by-play broadcaster for Yankees games on the YES Network, revealed that he has heard from Cardinals people that Contreras was removed from his role as starting catcher because he was calling pitches outside of the arsenals of Cardinals pitchers.

"“I found out something, I was talking to a lot of the Cardinal people. The reason that they took Contreras out from behind the plate, he was calling pitches that the pitcher on the mound didn’t have… He would be calling for a cutter, for a pitcher that didn’t throw a cutter. The pitchers were going crazy.”"

It tracks, considering we learned Jack Flaherty was vocal in complaining about Contreras, leading to his removal. Flaherty said the pitchers were throwing things that didn’t, “make sense.”

Out-of-arsenal pitches are certainly nonsensical.

Kay’s partner for the afternoon, Jeff Nelson, was incredulous to hear it, not only because it’s unheard of for a professional catcher to repeatedly make such a mistake, but because of where Contreras came from.

Nelson pointed out that Contreras should have known these pitchers well because Contreras faced them as a batter several times as a division rival over the years. Not only that, he batted a .933 OPS against St. Louis in 2022!

Either he was entirely lucky or completely wiped the scouting reports from his memory coming into this year.

It makes his struggles all the more confounding. We have to consider one variable that was introduced in 2023 as well: The pitch clock. It still doesn’t excuse Contreras’s missteps, but perhaps the element of being rushed by the timer was a tough adjustment for Contreras, leading to mental lapses in calling for pitches.