The Brewers have leaned on William Contreras all October, and on Monday night he delivered again.
Contreras, Milwaukee’s All-Star catcher in the middle of the lineup, kept his huge postseason rolling in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series by blasting a fifth-inning home run off Dodgers pitcher Kris Bubic to tie the game at four. It was the latest big swing in a playoff run that has made him the Brewers’ most dangerous bat.
He had already put Milwaukee on the board earlier in the game, lining a first-inning single to left that brought in Brice Turang, who is starting to heat up at the right time. After that, Contreras came back with the blast that swung the momentum and left his fingerprints all over the game.
His production this postseason has been relentless. In the National League Division Series, Contreras hit .375/.444/.750 with a 1.194 OPS, along with two home runs and two RBIs in four games. He was a major reason Milwaukee advanced to the National League Championship Series in the first place.
Game 1 didn’t give him much to work with offensively. He finished 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and a walk. Game 2 looked much more like the version the Brewers have been getting throughout the playoffs.
The homer also moved Contreras into a share of Brewers postseason history. With five playoff home runs, he is now tied with Jackson Chourio for the most in franchise history, per Curt Hogg of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"William Contreras is tied with Jackson Chourio for the Brewers franchise postseason homer lead. They've both bopped 5," Hogg wrote.
Monday added another layer to what has already been Contreras’ best Brewers playoff run. The 2026 season is his fourth in Milwaukee, and he entered the day with a career .247 batting average, four home runs and seven RBIs in 19 playoff games. He added to all of those numbers in Game 2, driving in two runs and launching another home run.
Milwaukee’s path to this point has been strong as well, with the Brewers taking down the Padres in the NLDS before beating the Dodgers in Game 1 on Sunday. In Game 2, Contreras was right at the center of the action again, giving the Brewers exactly the kind of lift a team needs from its biggest bats in October.
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William Contreras Fixed A Brewers Problem At Exactly The Right Time
William Contreras has become one of the Brewers most important pressure-point players, and not just because of his work at the plate. During the regular season, he was the most active catcher in baseball when it came to ABS challenges, piling up 185 of them while working through the same kind of ups and downs that come with any new system. His challenge success rate wavered over the summer, but the way he managed that responsibility gave Milwaukee a steady presence behind the plate as the season wore on.
The timing mattered because Contreras did not just carry the burden, he refined it. By September and into the postseason, his judgment on when to challenge improved noticeably, and his offensive approach sharpened alongside it. For a Brewers team leaning on every edge it could find, having its catcher settle into both roles at once helped solve a problem that could have been costly if it lingered much longer. [Read more 🡒]
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The most consequential deal came in 2021, when Adames arrived in Milwaukee and quickly became a central part of the Brewers' infield before later signing with the San Francisco Giants. Now the World Series has put an extra layer on that history, because one of the arms Tampa Bay received in that trade is in line to take the ball in Game 1 against the Brewers. For Milwaukee fans, it is the sort of matchup that turns an old transaction into a fresh reminder of how interconnected these teams have become. [Read more 🡒]
