I am an unapologetic endorser and enthusiast of enjoying your work when you wreck a ball. Hitting homers is very hard, and it’s fun to see guys show off a bit when the do something great.
… but you better be sure.
Because if you think you crush one, and instead it goes off the wall – even when factoring in the wind at Wrigley – it’s going to look very, very bad if you do what Willson Contreras did today:
Disrespect 90. pic.twitter.com/uRewpOA2lQ
— Cut4 (@Cut4) September 16, 2018
You have to do something rather thoughtless to get me riled up on this kind of thing, and I’ll admit: I did not like this moment from Contreras one bit. I get that he hasn’t been hitting for power this year, and probably had a surge of “oh thank God finally” going through him, but that is EXTREME pimping. To justify that strut, you better have hit the ball 450 feet.
Contreras did hit the ball very well – 108.2 mph, 416 feet – but, clearly, it wasn’t an obvious homer. So … yeah, that was very bad.
Joe Maddon agreed in the harshest terms you’ll see from him:
Maddon on Contreras not running out of the box on his 2B: "Horrible. I did not like that at all. That will be addressed. The whole team didn't like it."
Wow.
— Tony Andracki (@TonyAndracki23) September 16, 2018
Contreras spoke with the media after the game and conceded his own embarrassment:
Willson Contreras on that strut:
"What I did was not good for baseball. A lot of people are watching me and they've been really hard on me. At first, I thought it was gone and I kinda walked and then I started running hard. That was bad on my side."
— Tony Andracki (@TonyAndracki23) September 16, 2018
More Contreras: I'm embarrassed about myself. I've apologized to the pitcher and the whole team. I think that's the right thing to do.
— Sahadev Sharma (@sahadevsharma) September 16, 2018
Let’s hope, at a minimum, Contreras continues hitting the ball hard. Most days, that *is* a homer, and maybe the strut doesn’t look so bad …