Despite his mediocre start to the 2025 season, the Brewers' catcher has improved immensely in one area of the game

It hasn't been the start to the 2025 season that Milwaukee Brewers' catcher William Contreras envisioned. After being traded to the Brewers as part of the Sean Murphy blockbuster deal between the Oakland Athletics and Atlanta Braves back in December of 2022, Contreras posted two impressive seasons with his new ball club in 2023 and 2024. Each season saw Contreras earn a Silver Slugger award at the catcher position while also receiving votes for the National League MVP award. In 2024, Contreras was even the starting catcher for the NL in the mid-season All-Star game. However, this season has been another story.

Marred with a fractured finger on his left hand, Contreras has not been the same hitter that he was in his first two seasons with the Brewers. His OPS is down over 100 points from where it sat at the end of both the '23 and '24 seasons, due mostly to an absence of the power that Contreras had displayed in each of his previous two seasons. After carrying a slugging percentage of .457 and .466 in 2023 and 2024, respectively, Contreras is slugging just .353 this season. Additionally, his batting average, which sat in the .280s during his first two years in Milwaukee, is down to just .241 in 2025.

However, despite the step backwards, which is likely due in large part to the pain that Contreras is experiencing in his left hand, he has managed to find a way to remain productive at the plate by utilizing a strategy that had not been a part of his hitting profile up until this year: he's drawing walks.

William Contreras is drawing walks at a much higher clip than he ever has in his entire career

A minor increase in walks in a single half of a baseball season could simply be due to a player getting fewer pitches to hit, or even getting lucky with balls and strikes calls at the plate, but what Contreras has done in 2025 is not minor.

Whereas the Brewers catcher's walk rate (calculated by simply taking the amount of walks that a given player has drawn and dividing it by the number of plate appearances they've tallied) had previously hovered around the 10-11% mark, Contreras is drawing walks more than 15% of the time he comes to the plate this season. In fact, the 46 walks that Contreras has drawn this season are more than he collected throughout his entire final season with Atlanta back in 2022 — a season in which he appeared in nearly 100 games.

Contreras has 11 more walks than the Brewer with the next highest amount of free passes (Brice Turang) and currently ranks fifth in the NL in the category. In yesterday's win over the Chicago Cubs, Contreras drew three walks and came around to score on one of them, which was the difference in the Brewers' 8-7 win.

While Contreras and the Brewers wait for the power that he's displayed so emphatically in recent seasons to return to his bat, the Brewers' All-Star catcher is finding a way to remain productive by getting on base (and also playing elite defense). Perhaps it's a need to elevate the ball more, or maybe it's as simple as letting his finger heal, but the flashes of power that Contreras has displayed this year indicate that his ability to hit for a high slugging percentage hasn't gone anywhere. For now, however, as he searches for that consistent power to return, his ability to get on base has been a huge part of the Brewers’ improved play since the middle of May.