Willson Contreras plays baseball with energy and passion to go around. Usually, it works for him, matching his gritty and highly competitive style of play, but recently it's gotten him into some altercations with fans.
On August 8, some Boston Red Sox fans booed Contreras for not running out a ground ball at full effort. The same thing happened again on August 19, but Contreras jawed back and fell into a verbal altercation with a fan who was later
Contreras took the criticism well, as he did the time before. He said after the game that the fan he agued with was "inviting him to dinner" rather than calling them out. He also doubled-down on his love for playing baseball in Boston.
Contreras has been nursing multiple injuries throughout the season, as many players are through the grind of 162 games, plus the postseason if their team is lucky. He's been hit by 21 pitches, fouled a ball hard off his foot and he has a hamstring injury, which has kept him from going all-in on routine plays.
More Red Sox fans boo Willson Contreras as he plays through injuries
The many nagging issues haven't had an impact on Contreras' play, as he's slashing .284/.393/.534 with a career-high 25 home runs on the season and a .346/.452/.692 slash line with two homers in his last seven games. Some fans' reactions could lead you to think that not running out a routine ground ball is the end of the world — that giving one's all to a guaranteed out is somehow valiant because that's what their little league coaches told them.
There's no winning with people who think this way. They're probably the same people who call Roman Anthony "soft" for having a hand injury that few doctors have ever seen in a baseball player. They'd most likely call Contreras out if he wanted to sit through his injuries to heal them fully, because the team obviously needs him in as many games as possible.
And therein lies the fault in their logic. Contreras can't run out every ground ball at 100 percent because he'd be out of commission before the end of the season, during the playoff race, when the team needs him most. There's no sense in a runner with 49th percentile speed sprinting to first base on a play Ceddanne Rafaela or Jarren Duran, both with 90th percentile speed, would've been out on. Contreras plated a run on the play, he did his job, as legging out soft infield grounders isn't often in the job description for a slugging first baseman.
At the end of the day, Contreras said it best himself: “If you’re a smart fan, you know what’s going on."
Add us as a preferred source on Google