Willson Contreras provided one of the few good Red Sox swings in this embarrassing showing against the Yankees and then took another postgame whack at his team.
The first-year Red Sox slugger seemingly took aim at the organization’s analytics philosophy after their 9-2 Game 2 loss to the Yankees in a wild-card sweep.
“There’s a lot of things to get better at in each area of the game. If you watch the game, we have to get better at the game running, we have to get better at taking care of the stealers, we have to do a lot of different stuff,” said Contreras, who homered off Max Fried in the sixth inning. “It’s not enough when you have talent, or you have data, or you have computers telling you what to do, because this is baseball.
“The data is here to help us but at the end of the day, you’re going to need experience and veteran guys to win games. There’s a lot of stuff that I would like to say, but I’ll state it like that.”
If there was any confusion about who Contreras, 34, was throwing under the bus, the line “you have computers telling you what to do” clears that all up.
The Red Sox, like any team that thrives in baseball, rely on analytics to help them.
There will always be a debate about how much of the human element should be blended into games versus specifically relying on data to make decisions.
Contreras received a follow-up question about whether the Red Sox rely too much on data, and provided a cryptic decision.
“If you watch the game,” he said, “if you watch the game.”
His shot at the “computers” is notable since it came after two seemingly analytics-driven decisions for the Red Sox backfired, one in each game.
First-year manager Chad Tracy pulled Payton Tolle in a 1-0 game to have lefty reliever Erik Miller face Ben Rice in the fifth inning in Game 1 and Rice promptly homered.
He tried a similar move Wednesday in yanking Sonny Gray in the fifth for Miller to face Cody Bellinger in a 1-0 game and the Yankees outfielder laced an RBI single.
When asked his thoughts on pulling Gray, Contreras did not verbally answer but said all he needed to say by instead pretending to sow his mouth shut.
Contreras also provided an interesting answer about what happened to the team’s once-scorching lineup, with Boston tearing the cover off the ball during its 32-5 run that saved its season and then slumping to end the regular season before this two-run showing over 18 postseason innings.
“That’s a good question,” he replied. I’m not going to answer it because I don’t want to give my honest answer. We got eliminated, that’s the bottom line.
Contreras is under contract with Boston for the 2027 season and the team holds a $17.5 team option for 2028, and he produced a career-best .901 OPS this past season.
Boston surely will aim this offseason to build a deeper lineup around him and Roman Antony and if the team value his two cents, it seems he’ll be telling them to forget the data and use their eyes.
