William Contreras has finally nudged his batted-ball profile in the direction so many have wanted to see. The problem is that the results still haven’t followed.
The Brewers catcher is putting the ball in the air more often than he has before. His ground-ball rate has dropped to a career-low 43.5% in 2026, and his 17.2% pull air rate is, for the first time since a brief stint with Atlanta in 2021, a touch above league average. On paper, that sounds like progress for a hitter with Contreras’s kind of raw power.
But the damage has gone the other way. Contreras is sitting on a .118 isolated power and a .406 slugging percentage, both signs that the ball isn’t leaving his bat the way it should. His 107 wRC+ is the lowest of his Brewers tenure.
There is some bad luck baked into that line. His .340 xwOBA suggests he should have picked up a few more extra-base hits.
Still, the bigger issue is that the new pull-air shape is not nearly as productive as it looks at first glance. Not every pulled fly ball is created equal.
Contreras’s hard-hit rate has fallen to 43.5%, which is still a bit above league average but also the lowest of his career. When he does get the ball into a power trajectory, the contact is often coming in around 90 mph - the kind of ball that usually turns into a routine flyout rather than a loud extra-base hit. His xwOBA on contact is .360, better than last season but still below his best work in 2023 and 2024.
The swing changes behind all this have already been documented. Back in May, Matt Trueblood wrote about how adjustments to Contreras’s stance, stride, and swing path pushed his contact point farther out in front without adding power. The first half has now shown what that looks like in practice.
Against fastballs, Contreras is still doing damage. He’s slugging .475 off them with a .499 xSLG, and Statcast’s swing timing data shows he’s lined up on hard stuff better than ever. The tradeoff is that by getting to the ball earlier, he has had a tougher time staying back on breaking balls and offspeed pitches.
That flatter bat path has helped him avoid rolling over the ball as much when he’s early, but it has also created a different problem. He’s meeting soft stuff in a better vertical spot, yet a lot of those early swings are turning into pop-ups instead of line drives or driven fly balls.
The split tells the story. Last season, Contreras slugged .367 against breaking pitches and .403 against offspeed pitches, and eight of his 16 home runs came against those offerings.
This year, those numbers have fallen to .258 and .361, with only one homer total. He has already popped out 15 times against non-fastballs, and on 10 of those swings he was at least 32 inches out in front of his body.
That fits the broader shape of the Brewers’ offense, too. For the fourth straight season, they have one of the lowest pull air rates in baseball as a team.
The organization is not opposed to pulling the ball in the air, but it wants that damage to come with the right kind of balance. Contreras appears to have drifted away from that idea, and the end result has been less power from a hitter whose bat has long hinted at more.
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