Imago
Source: IMAGO
Imago
Source: IMAGO
Forget the team logos; the real beef is between Willson Contreras and the entire Milwaukee Brewers organization. After his 24th hit-by-pitch, that long-simmering feud has finally exploded. And none of the players are holding back while talking about the incident.
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“They always say, ‘I’m not trying to hit you.’ That gets old. So next time they hit me again, I’m going to take one of them out. That’s a message,” Willson Contreras reacted after the Red Sox-Brewers game.
The Brewers and the Red Sox were a part of a high-tension game, which Milwaukee won 8-6. But things got hot in the 4th inning.
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Brandon Woodruff hit Willson Contreras on the hand. Contreras was very angry and immediately started shouting at Woodruff and walked to first.
The moment shifted energy as both dugouts reacted, and tension stayed high throughout the game. What angered Willson Contreras was not that he got hit.
Willson Contreras has a message for the Brewers after being hit by them for the 24th time in his career pic.twitter.com/FFUiZofl30
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) April 7, 2026
He was frustrated because it was the 24th time the Brewers hit him, and Woodruff alone had hit him six times in total.
And Contreras almost kept his word about “taking out” a player in the same inning.
While running from 1st to 2nd, Contreras slid so hard that some part of the studs caught Brewers’ shortstop, David Hamilton. Although it was legal, you could see the intent behind the slide.
But Contreras did not just talk, he also proved it with his bat.
Willson Contreras went 3-3 with a walk, a homer, and 2 RBIs. He reached base 5 times. But Christian Yelich added another layer of tension after the game ended.
When a reporter asked him about the reaction from Red Sox and Contreras, Yelich said, “We’ve seen that skit for the last 10 years. It’s nothing new.”
Even pitcher Brandon Woodruff chimed in.
“We’ve been through that — nine years for me. It seems like every year. He’s trying to play a game, and he’s trying to get his side fired up, which is fine. Once I knew what was going on, I wasn’t going to let it affect me on the mound.”
Woodruff later pointed out that he had a job to do, especially with the Brewers looking a little thin.
With the Series starting on a fiery note, it is going to be interesting to see how the rest of the games are going to play out.
Willson Contreras vs. Brandon Woodruff: History and beef
With the tensions between the Boston Red Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers at an all-time high, it is a good time to verify if Willson Contreras is right about him getting hit a lot.
From a statistical point of view, Willson Contreras gets hit often, with 131 HBPs over 4,318 career plate appearances. That equals roughly a 3 percent rate, triple the league average since 2018.
Looking deeper, Woodruff has hit 33 batters across 755.2 innings, slightly above league average. He has a 0.044 HBP rate per inning, and that barely exceeds the typical pitcher’s average of 0.04.
In the six times that Brandon Woodruff has hit Contreras, pitch data shows that 4 of his 6 pitches were sinkers, 2 were fastballs. Those balls naturally move in, so hitters who choose to stand close to the plate are mostly in the firing line.
Yet the HBP by Brandon Woodruff caused a major stir among the players, and it went on for the full game. But what added more tension is that Willson Contreras’s brother, William Contreras, was the one catching for the Brewers when this incident happened.
Against the Milwaukee Brewers, Contreras has been hit 24 times in 468 plate appearances. That equals a 5.1 percent rate, notably higher than his already elevated career hit rate. Given all that, maybe Contreras has his reasons to be angry at the Brewers.
But did Woodruff hit him intentionally? Only Woodruff can answer that.
Written by
Edited by
Arunaditya Aima