One pleasing thing from the recent Contreras home run binge: 6 of his 8 homers have come at home, where the homer-hitting environment is much more suppressed than the crazy, homer-happy parks up in the altitude out West.
It was a two year trend in the wrong direction. There was more than enough reason to worry. Trend is hardly the word for one year in a dramatically different role. Could have ranked him over lesser performing arms like Johnson and Underwood, it's not as if either outclassed him with stuff. Well, I did have him ranked over both of them. I've never liked Underwood anyway. I just didn't have him ranked as the best player in the whole system or second or wherever you had him. But, whatever. Can we please avoid having this discussion for the 23rd time?
Nobody was panicking, either. It was just, well, we didn't want to rank a relief pitcher above a guy like Willson Contreras, especially when there was a negative trend in his walk-rate into the danger zone.
Even I'm ready to admit that he looks damn good right now. Yep, basically you take all the great things Tom's said about him and combine that with the walks being back down, and it equals pure gold.
Remember when we were all pissed that Zobrist would never play in the outfield? And now he actually does occasionally. And it doesn't really matter because he's like the best player in baseball.