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Chicago Cubs: Willson Contreras is quietly becoming the catcher he predicted
Chicago Cubs backstop Willson Contreras is known for his high energy and emotion. But a calmer Contreras is becoming the catcher he predicted in 2018.
Calm is probably not an adjective you would use to describe Chicago Cubs catcher Willson Contreras. Yet he’s been overshadowed by other Cubs like the flamboyant Javier Baez. He didn’t attract the buzz created by Kris Bryant and isn’t considered a team leader like Anthony Rizzo or Jason Heyward.
But in January 2018, Contreras put MLB on notice that he was coming for Yadier Molina and Buster Posey.
“I used to watch a lot of those guys,” Contreras told the Chicago Sun-Times. “But now I’m watching myself because I know that I’m going to be better than them. That’s my plan. That’s my (mindset).” … “I know that I have a lot of talent, and I thank God every day for giving me this kind of talent that I have. In my mind, I want to be the best catcher in the game for a long time — like it was with Yadier Molina, like it is with Buster Posey.”
As everyone knows, Molina took exception to the remark and told the upstart backstop to “respect the ranks.” My guess is the St. Louis backstop isn’t as disdainful of the remark today. On Tuesday, Contreras will appear in his second consecutive All-Star Game as the starting catcher for the National League. The last catcher to start consecutive All-Star Games? Buster Posey.
Chicago Cubs: Off to a great start in 2018
In 2018 Contreras got off to a scorching start to the season, amassing a .279/.369/.449 slash in the first half of the season. In July he slashed a .309/.405/.471, his best month of the year.
But Willson played 82 games that first half, nearly every game. It got to him and the bottom dropped out for him as it did the whole team. Theo Epstein was especially vocal about Contreras’s slump, singling him out when discussing how the offense broke. Likely that was due to the offensive outage being most acute in his case, a meager .200/.291/.294 slash the last 56 games played.
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Among catchers with 300 or more plate appearances, Contreras ranked 12th in wRC+, 19th in slugging, and 14th in OPS. All were significant drops from his midseason rankings. Joe Maddon opined that perhaps he overused his catcher early on in 2018. It is a mistake Maddon isn’t repeating this year and the results show it.
Leading the league in 2019
In 77 games, five fewer than in the first half compared to 2018, Willson’s numbers are improved over last year’s hot start. He has compiled a .286/.381/.556 slash and .937 OPS, an OPS 119 points higher than 2018.
In OBP, slugging, OPS, and wRC+, Contreras leads all catchers who have 200 or more plate appearances. On the Cubs, he ranks third in home runs with 18, has amassed a 147 OPS+ while making himself into one of the best hitters on the team.
Chicago Cubs: Can Contreras maintain this pace?
So the question is can the Chicago backstop maintain this torrid offensive output in the second half? There are signs of leakage. His June numbers were down and especially toward the very end of the month.
His month high .976 OPS dropped to .936 and those numbers are down from the 1.043 OPS at the end of April. However, his July numbers in five games did start to show a recovery.
I see Maddon resting Contreras a little more aggressively than he did in 2018, though it will prove difficult to take one of the best bats out of your lineup while the NL Central remains a horse race. Fortunately, Victor Caratini has proven to be a capable backup on the offensive side, even though he lacks Willson’s defensive abilities.
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Contreras is one of the core players on the team, alongside Bryant, Rizzo, Baez, and at least this year, Heyward. It is around that core that Epstein will build moving forward. Others have to step up if the Cubs are to make a run deep into the postseason. But it looks moving forward that the team has their guy behind the dish.