The Cardinals prized offseason acquisition, Willson Contreras, has gotten off to the worst start of his career. The situation continues to get worse.
During the offseason, the St. Louis Cardinals inked Willson Contreras to a five-year $87.5 million-dollar contract. So far in 2023, Contreras has been far from an $87.5 million-dollar player. And the situation just continues to get worse for the Cardinals.
Heading into 2023, the Cardinals were coming off an NL Central division title led by their two NL MVP candidates, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. After not winning a playoff game in 2022, the Cardinals spent big in the offseason in order to replace Yadier Molina behind the dish.
Flash forward to today and the Cardinals have appeared to put together a pitching staff that has no chance to take them to the playoffs. To make matters worse, their big offseason acquisition has been one of their least productive players in the lineup: Willson Contreras.
Cardinals: Willson Contreras signing looking worse by the day
Through 62 games, Contreras has slashed .201/.293/.352, while currently having a career low in OPS+. His entire slash line is a career low, down significantly from his previous worst seasons.
He doesn’t appear close to breaking out of this slump either. In fact, he has been much worse recently than he’s ever been in his entire career. Contreras is currently riding a 5-for-59 slide at the plate and has shown no signs of bursting out of it.
In fact, to make matters worse, Contreras was asked about his slump and added, “I think I’ve lost my confidence and I lost my trust and lost the trust that I came into the season with. It just went away.”
The situation continues to get worse in St. Louis. Confidence is a crucial part of the game of baseball that Contreras can’t afford to lose. He will need to play much-improved baseball both at the plate and behind the dish in order to push the Cardinals out of last place in the NL Central. This improvement is necessary to play up to his $87.5 million dollar price tag as well.