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Many Cardinals fans wondered why John Mozeliak didn’t trade multiple assets to land catcher Sean Murphy from the perpetual also-ran Oakland A’s after the 2022 season.

Instead, the Cardinals kept their assets and signed Willson Contreras as a free agent ahead of the 2023 season. And after a slow start last season, Contreras has been just fine in the STL.

Meanwhile Braves fans might be wondering why their team shipped away William Contreras, Willson's younger brother, along with several other assets to get Murphy in a three-way trade with the A’s and Milwaukee Brewers.

As it turns out, William Contreras is becoming an absolute beast for the Brewers. As great as Murphy was for the Braves last season, the smarter long-term play for Atlanta might have been to invest more time into William.

Like Willson for the Cardinals, William has put in work for the Brewers to improve at framing pitchers and working with hurlers. And like Willson, he can hit.

Writing for Yahoo! Sports, Jordan Shusterman gives us some details on the younger Contreras:

He’s not just a good hitter for a catcher. Contreras ranks as one of the best all-around players in baseball, with his 6.6 fWAR since the start of last season — his first in Milwaukee — tied for ninth among big-league position players.

Since arriving from Atlanta in the December 2022 trade that landed the Braves another star catcher in Sean Murphy from Oakland, Contreras has rapidly ascended the hierarchy of big-league backstops. 

Long known as the younger brother of three-time All-Star Willson Contreras, William’s prospect status grew as he climbed the minor-league ladder with Atlanta. After intermittent playing time in 2020 and 2021, he broke out in a big way in 2022, with his first All-Star season as a part-time catcher for the Braves alongside Travis d’Arnaud.

That winter, the opportunity to land a more established catcher in Murphy, one with a Gold Glove Award already on his résumé, proved too enticing for Atlanta’s front office to pass up — even at the cost of Contreras. It’s not that Atlanta didn’t believe Contreras could become a more complete player at the game’s most demanding position. But with the veteran (Travis) d’Arnaud in the fold, there simply weren’t going to be enough opportunities for Contreras to get the reps necessary to become an every-day catcher. Instead, he was used by Atlanta as a valuable trade chip, one that has since become an invaluable piece of Milwaukee’s roster.

“It's awesome to see his growth and how he’s essentially become more of a staple as a top catcher in the league,” Brewers pitcher Bryce Wilson told Yahoo! Sports. “You knew that eventually he was gonna turn the corner and become one of the best. I'll put him up against any catcher in the big leagues any day of the week, both offensively and defensively.”

William Contreras drove in two more runs Tuesday night, giving him 17 for the season to go with a .375 batting average. Meanwhile Murphy has been on the shelf for the Braves since suffering an oblique injury to start the season.

TALKIN’ BASEBALL

Here is what folks are writing about Our National Pastime:

David Schoenfield, : “(Paul) Goldschmidt is a pending free agent, which alone makes him a potential trade candidate. He turns 37 in September, so an extension or re-signing isn't a sure thing either. Plus, the Cardinals are forcing Jordan Walker into right field right now when his future defensive home is probably first base. On the other hand, Goldschmidt has 10-and-5 rights, so he can veto any trade, and if he's having a good season at the plate, it's more likely that the Cardinals are in the division race and will want to keep him. Let's then throw out (Thomas) Saggese, who came over from the Rangers last trade deadline in the Jordan Montgomery deal and hit .312 with 26 home runs between Double-A and Triple-A. Kiley had him as the Cardinals No. 5 prospect entering the season, but Nolan Gorman and Nolan Arenado block him in the infield at second and third base.”                     

Dan Szymborski, FanGraphs: “Believe it or not, we’re almost 10% of the way through the 2024 season. While baseball always offers myriad surprises, especially this early, one of the ones that most intrigues me is the success of the Kansas City Royals, who stand at 10-6, just a half-game behind the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central. Naturally, as the resident spoilsport of the baseball analytics community, my job is to dig into the unexpected and see if it has some meat on its bones. And the Royals winning the division would definitely count as unexpected. Justin Mason was the only member of our staff to pick them to win the Central before the season started, while our playoff odds had KC with about a 1-in-14 chance to stand atop the division; ZiPS was even lower, pegging them at a 5.9% chance of taking the division.”

Marc Normandin, Baseball Reference: “The A’s entered play on Monday night with a 7-9 record. Not the worst, but it’s early, and they had also already been outscored by 22 runs—you’ll likely have a more accurate end of season projection extrapolating that figure over 162 rather than their current win percentage. They aren’t a good team, and they don’t really have any way of getting better. By Baseball Prospectus’ own reckoning, the A’s began 2024 with the 29^th-ranked farm system  in baseball—it doesn’t take much imagination to reckon that they have the least talent, from top to bottom, of any organization in the league. The White Sox (25) can put up a fight, sure, especially since a bad 2023 big league team might be even worse this year, but it’s still likely the A’s bout to win. Or lose, as it were. The farm is the only place where they could reliably get help from, given the current . . . everything . . . surrounding the franchise. Minor leaguers already signed to the organization can’t say no, like trade partners or potential free agent signings, and as much as draft picks should stay away, that’s unlikely to happen, either, at least not en masse. Look at that farm system ranking again, though, and realize that there is no help coming.” 

Ray Ratto, The Defector: “In sum, the White Sox are doomed, and maybe in ways that even those champions of industrial-strength inertia the Oakland Athletics are not. When Jerry Reinsdorf said last November at the presser announcing new general manager Chris Getz, ‘We want to get better as fast as we possibly can. If I went outside the organization, it would have taken anybody at least a year to evaluate the organization. I could have brought Branch Rickey back, and it would have taken him a year to evaluate the organization,’ he was lying. It does not take a year to evaluate this. Branch Rickey could have done it by game eight, and he's been dead since 1965. Teams have bad starts all the time; hell, 135 teams have started 4-12, and two of them won World Series, the 1951 Giants and 1914 Braves—which, yes, counts as real worth-referencing history. But mostly those teams lose in the neighborhood of 95 games a year, thus making 4-12 a pretty good indicator of future performance. About that run differential, which is actually the 16th-worst all time after so few games: It's not really worth noting because the last time to exceed that was the 2023 A's. See, that's the difference. A stat that's only a year old isn't a stat worth referencing. It's an aside. On the other hand, these White Sox are on pace to be shut out 61 times this year, shattering the old record set by the 1908 Cardinals, who were shut out 33 times.” 

Matt Snyder, : “So who has been the best team in 2024 so far, in terms of just the body of work? It's probably the Yankees. They haven't lost a series. They've only played six home games while having gone 8-2 on the road. They won four out of four in Houston and took two of three in Arizona. They just took two of three from a Guardians team that was 9-3 when the series started. There's also an awful lot of talent on the team, so I'm inclined to put them No. 1 right now. This doesn't mean I think the Yankees are going to sit here all year or even next week. This doesn't mean I think they're going to end with a better record than the Braves or Dodgers (I don't). Hell, it doesn't even mean I think they'll win the AL East (I'd stick with the O's right now). These aren't predictions. I do, however, think they've been the best team to date in Major League Baseball in 2024 and there's enough talent here to justify slotting them near the top and to believe they'll keep playing well. That's number one for me right now.”

MEGAPHONE

“He looks like he's 12, he acts like he's 30, and he has handled it all beautifully. He came to [big league] spring training for the first time, and it seemed like it was his 14th. I went to college [at Arkansas], I played in the SEC, we played before 10,000 people every game . . .  He came from Stillwater, Oklahoma. Two years ago, he was playing in front of . . . parents. And then his first game is at Fenway Park. Amazing.”

Baltimore Orioles catcher Jared McCann, on rookie Jackson Holliday.