Helmet throws after racist remarks from Cade Cavalli. Appealed suspensions. Clearing the benches against the New York Yankees. Thrown out of back-to-back games. Saying he’s going to “take one of them out” if he gets hit by a Milwaukee Brewers pitcher again. Snubbed from the All-Star Game because Toronto Blue Jays fans wanted their slumping first baseman to start. Willson Contreras has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. I’m here to talk about the right ones.
Willson Contreras has always been fiery — lately, he's also been great
Contreras has always been a fiery player, and you don’t have to witness a blow up to see how. Just watch Contreras in the batter’s box; watch how he stands and then how he moves when the pitch is delivered. It almost looks like his front shoulder is the strike zone, and in the pantheon of crowding the plate, it’s special stuff. Contreras is, understandably, a routine member of the Top 10 most hit-by-pitch players in Major League Baseball.
Crowding the plate is one of those things pitchers and hitters will never agree on. Pitchers, especially older ones, will tell you that once hitters started to wear arm and face padding as body armor, they couldn’t control the inside of the plate like they used to. Hitters will just ask you if you’ve ever actually stood in the box against a guy throwing triple digits, and if you think sticking your elbow out over the plate is anything short of pure bravery.
Contreras, meanwhile, crowds the plate because it works — he gets on top of pitches and drives them pull side. But I also wonder if he crowds the plate to fire himself up. He’s going to war with this pitcher, and he’s not going to cede a single inch of space over the plate. Satchel Paige famously said that “home plate don’t move,” and Contreras isn’t going to move either. Some call that cheap, others say it takes guts. I say it works.
Because beyond all the fire, the controversy, the snubs, the apologies and the brawls, beyond even Contreras’ overflowing emotion about the tragedy of the recent Venezuelan earthquake and his public candor about his feelings — something that is never easy for a pro athlete to do — we have an incredible hitting season. Contreras has, through it all, been everything and more the Boston Red Sox needed him to be. He is their best player, a perfect fit in the lineup and their only real power bat. It is the best season of Contreras’ career — and it’s not particularly close.
Through the noise, Contreras is having easily the best season of his career
Pick a stat, any stat, and 2026 will be a career-high for Contreras. Average? Yep. On-base percentage? Slugging? OPS? Yep, yep and yep. xwOBA, ISO, wRC+, WAR? Yep, yep, yep and (guess what) yep. His home run total is on pace to nearly lap his career best. He is so by far Boston’s best hitter that it makes you wonder if they should keep Contreras through the trade deadline, even if they remain 8-10 games below .500. The Red Sox stirred the pot in Boston media by refusing to pay Alex Bregman, but Contreras has blown him out of the water in 2026 as an offensive player, and arguments can be made that Caleb Durbin has been just as good as Bregman. That’s uh, a separate conversation.
Contreras has changed up his approach in the last two seasons to be much, much much more pull heavy. That’s actually a common occurrence with older power hitters (see: Kyle Schwarber), probably because they’ve seen enough pitchers to know what to wait for and what to crush to Narnia. Pull-air is a controversial phrase among the baseball establishment (especially, in my estimation, color commentators on local broadcasts who cannot believe hitters don’t use the whole field more), but Contreras is showing why it works. He has launched so many pull homers this year that he … does not have an opposite field home run.
You, yes YOU, have as many opposite field home runs as Willson Contreras this season. He has fundamentally changed his approach as he's gotten older and become an absolute pull-air monster pic.twitter.com/BIro8zz7HV
— Oliver Fox (@oliversfox) July 6, 2026
How often do you get a 34-year-old former catcher throwing down by far his best hitting season? ZiPS, a popular projection model at FanGraphs, had Contreras down for 17 home runs this season, part of the catastrophic projection that no Red Sox hitter would eclipse 20 home runs in 2026. Well, uh, Contreras has 20 home runs on July 6. He’s on pace for 37, and the updated ZiPS model think he will hit 30 by the end of September. That is quite the spike.
Maybe it’s because of the new pull-air approach. Maybe Contreras’ shift to first base from catcher has freed his mind to all its wonderful power-hitting dreams. Maybe it’s all just a fluke since Contreras still doesn’t walk that much and strikes out all the time. But the man is creating runs, certainly deserves to be an All-Star (and better be at the top of every injury replacement list), and should get major credit for this spectacular offensive season. The unsavory extracurricular activities are a distraction, and one Boston could do without; but, amidst a last-ditch effort to save a probably doomed season, they certainly can’t survive without this epic version of Willson Contreras.
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