Willson Contreras’ tenure with the Cardinals has not lacked for drama, controversy, or interruptions in his work behind the plate. Unfortunately, the latest chapter in that saga began on Tuesday, when a J.D. Martinez swing fractured the 31-year-old catcher’s left forearm. After undergoing surgery on Wednesday, he’s likely to be out until around the All-Star break, leaving the struggling Cardinals to right their season without their most productive hitter.
The injury took place during the top of the second inning of Tuesday’s Mets-Cardinals game. With one out and nobody on base, Martinez swung at a 2-1 slider from Miles Mikolas and connected squarely with Contreras’ forearm “like a lumberjack taking a hack at a sequoia tree,” as Cardinals broadcaster Brad Thompson said. Conteras went down immediately and then began flailing around in obvious pain before being tended to by the Cardinals’ staff. Adding insult to injury, Martinez was awarded first base due to catcher’s interference.
X-rays taken at the ballpark confirmed the fracture, and while the Cardinals have not revealed whether it was Contreras’ radius or ulna that broke, Under the Knife’s Will Carroll reported that he did have a plate inserted because the bone was slightly out of alignment. It is worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of the injury, Contreras said he was told he’d be out six to eight weeks, but that estimate has since been revised upward to 10 weeks, which would put his return right after the All-Star break.
The injury may well have deprived Contreras of a fourth All-Star selection, as it comes at a time when he ranks among the NL’s top hitters. In his second year with the Cardinals, he’s batting .280/.398/.551 with six homers in 128 plate appearances, ranking eighth in the NL in on-base percentage, sixth in wRC+ (171), and fifth in both slugging percentage and WAR (1.8) — with his younger brother, Brewers catcher William Contreras, in close proximity (.340/.414/.517, 165 wRC+, 1.9 WAR) in most of those categories.
But for all of Contreras the Elder’s contributions at and behind the plate, the Cardinals are in rough shape. They entered Friday having lost 13 out of 19 to fall to 15-22, last in the NL Central. Their odds of winning the division have plummeted from 33.2% to 5.6% since Opening Day, with their odds of making the playoffs falling from 48.2% to 14% in that same span. With Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Gorman, and several other players in an ongoing funk, Nolan Arenado is their only remaining regular with a wRC+ of at least 100, and the team ranks last in the league in scoring at 3.43 runs per game.
While it’s easy to cast Martinez as the villain for this injury given his reputation for standing deep in the batter’s box, the reality is that Conteras was reaching into dangerous territory — part of the ongoing, industry-wide trend of catchers moving closer to the plate as a means of improving their ability to frame low pitches. As a result, catcher’s interference calls have become much more frequent; in 2023, such incidents happened 3.8 times as often as in 2013, and eight times as often as in 2003 — and right now, they’re up 50% compared to last year!
As MLB.com’s Tom Tango illustrated on his blog last August, interference call rates increase the closer a catcher is to the plate (as measured by Statcast’s average location of his right shoulder) and decrease the further back he positions himself, with 66 inches behind the plate the point of inflection. The correlation between positioning and framing is such that within the 57-to-72 inch range where catchers position themselves, every inch closer to the plate is worth an extra run of framing. Meanwhile, each interference call costs about 0.3 runs.
Contreras refused to blame Martinez, either. “He saw the pitch really late and tried to get his emergency swing off, and that’s when he hit me… I think if he sees the pitch well, he would try to hit it out in front, and he wouldn’t hit me. I’m not blaming him. He’s doing his thing.” Martinez was…
