Brewers’ catcher William Contreras slots in at No. 3 in our 2025 MVBrewers rankings, behind Freddy Peralta and Brice Turang, respectively. The BCB community voted for Contreras with 18 votes in The Feed, compared to one vote for Jackson Chourio and one vote for Quinn Priester.
Contreras, who turns 28 this offseason, took a very slight step back in 2025, and that can at least partially be attributed to a hand fracture he dealt with throughout the season. Even after getting out to a slow start, Contreras turned in his second-best season by WAR, behind only 2024, when he finished fifth in NL MVP voting.
Across 150 games, Contreras hit .260/.355/.399 (111 OPS+) with 17 homers, 28 doubles, 76 RBIs, 89 runs, and six steals. He also turned in career-best strikeout and walk rates, at 18.2% and 12.7%, respectively.
Defensively, Contreras provided stability behind the plate, starting a career-high 128 games at catcher as Milwaukee’s backup options, Eric Haase and Danny Jansen, struggled at times. His .995 fielding percentage was the highest of his career while playing 1,111 2/3 innings behind the plate, as he had just six errors compared to 43 assists. He also caught 28% of would-be base stealers, good for the 12th-best rate among 63 catchers with at least 18 stolen-base attempts.
Contreras finished above-average in the majority of Baseball Savant’s batting metrics, including xwOBA (64th percentile), xBA (56th percentile), average exit velocity (75th percentile), hard-hit rate (81st percentile), bat speed (67th percentile), squared-up rate (75th percentile), chase rate (67th percentile), whiff rate (51st percentile), strikeout rate (68th percentile), and walk rate (90th percentile). He also ranked in the top half of catchers defensively for blocks above average, caught stealing above average, and framing.
As with Peralta and Turang above him, Contreras’ signature moment(s) in 2025 came in the month of August, when the Brewers were surging. He first had a two-homer game in a big comeback win over the Mets, keeping the Brewers close enough for Isaac Collins to hit a walk-off homer in the ninth in a 7-6 victory.
Contreras next big moment came the following Sunday against the Reds, when the Brewers were looking to extend their franchise-record 14-game winning streak. Down 1-0 in the ninth, Contreras stepped up and launched a go-ahead two-run homer. Unfortunately, the Brewers’ bullpen was unable to hold the lead, so this moment won’t live on in Brewers’ lore as it may have otherwise.
Lastly, later in that same week, Contreras hit a walk-off homer of his own against former Willy Adames and the Giants. After Adames put San Francisco within one with his second homer of the night in the eighth, the Giants were able to tie it up in the ninth against Trevor Megill. Contreras then came up with two outs in the ninth and hit a towering fly ball just over the glove of Heliot Ramos in left to give Milwaukee a 5-4 win.
Contreras, like so many others for Milwaukee, had a disappointing postseason. He did slug a pair of homers against the Cubs in the NLDS, but he hit just .235/.297/.441 with eight hits across 37 plate appearances (34 at-bats). Still, it was another great season for one of Milwaukee’s best players. Let’s hope he can return to his 2024 form in 2026.
We’ll continue these rankings on Tuesday with our No. 4 player. To weigh in on the voting, visit The Feed.
