Milwaukee Brewers catcher William Contreras played the whole season with a fractured left finger. The finger bent the wrong way, the joints didn’t seem to line up right, and the whole thing grew gnarly and twisted.
And yet he played on through the pain, missing 12 games all season and going weeks between days off. It’s not like the Brewers rested his catcher’s legs by plugging him in at DH every other day or two. Of his 150 starts, 128 came behind the plate.
Both as a handler of the pitching staff and a bat in the middle of Pat Murphy’s order, Contreras was a pillar on which the entire team relied.
Although the season ended in the NLCS against the Dodgers, it was the Brewers’ most successful in seven years, one in which they won a franchise-record 97 games. It’s fans who should be thanking Contreras for helping to lead the team to such success, not the other way around. Man of character that he is, Contreras posted a thank you note to fans, anyway, thanking them for their season-long support and looking ahead to next year’s grind.
•the king
•Wild Bill
•👑 I’m here to thank God, my family, my loved ones and especially the @brewers Fans for this year, it was fun this year and I promise I’ll be back next year with more of me, Thanks for everything, We’ll keep working pic.twitter.com/n1e5beLzFa— William Contreras (@Wcontreras42) October 23, 2025
Wild Bill helped lead Brewers along wild ride of a season – all with a disfigured finger
After slugging .457 and .466 in his first two seasons as a Brewer, the two-time Silver Slugger had fans flummoxed over his slow start in the power department this year. In May, it came out that Contreras was playing with a broken finger, helping to explain at least some of the drop off in pop. How could he grip and swing a bat at full force?
Ask him. Funky finger and all, Contreras surged mid-summer, cranking out 11 home runs in a month-long stretch between July 30 and the end of August.
Despite a homerless September, he finished the season with 17 home runs, 76 RBIs, and a .754 OPS, more than respectable production for a catcher, if still a bit below his standards. Defensively, Contreras was as good as ever. His 3.9 WAR ranked second among Brewers position players, behind only second baseman Brice Turang at 5.5.
Contreras came up with big hits and homers all season long. In 67 at-bats with a runner in scoring position and two outs, he drove in 19 runs. He piled up 53 RBIs in 149 at-bats with RISP overall. In the playoffs, he added two more home runs to his total, including a solo shot in Milwaukee’s 3-1 Game 5 win over the Cubs in the NLDS.
Fans let him know they appreciate not just his stats but also his leadership, toughness, and good energy with an overwhelmingly positive response to his post. Hopefully Contreras gets that finger fixed up in the offseason so he won’t have to spend another year making do with nine working digits on the bat handle.
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