FORT MYERS, Fla. — Skepticism prevails regarding the Red Sox’ lineup. Who will supply power?
Trevor Story is the only member of the club to reach the 25-homer plateau in his career. The most-discussed candidates to join him are Roman Anthony and Wilyer Abreu, both in the process of establishing their big league baselines.
But there is another player capable of making noise. Willson Contreras is 33 years old. Though a three-time All-Star with six 20-homer seasons, his career high is 24. And yet …
“I don’t see why he can’t hit 30,” said Red Sox hitting coach Pete Fatse. “He’s got the power to do it. I don’t see why that’s off the table.”
Contreras chuckled when asked to speculate about his power potential but declined to offer numbers. Even so, he doesn’t lack for confidence in his offensive capabilities.
“Whoever knows baseball, whoever knows the details of the game, knows that I’m a hitter that’s been in the big leagues for 10 years. I’ve been in the league for 10 years for a reason,” said Contreras. “I’m looking forward to putting up good numbers in Boston.”
Contreras has emerged as one of the top middle-of-the-order righthanded hitters in baseball. Over the last four years he’s had strong on-base skills with significant thump, posting a .256/.356/.461 line.
Though he lacks the light-tower power of Aaron Judge and Pete Alonso, Contreras joins that pair as the only righthanded hitters in baseball with an OPS+ of at least 120 in each of the last four years.
While Contreras’s playing time has been suppressed by his time as a catcher from 2022-24, and injuries (some related to his work behind the plate — most notably, a broken wrist in 2024), he’s averaged 27 homers per 162 games.
“He doesn’t necessarily get the love that I think he should,” said Story. “He’s been one of the most consistent righthanded hitters in the game since I’ve been in the league, and he has a presence about him.”
Opposing pitchers agree. Contreras presents a ferocious at-bat.
“When he comes up, you know there’s potential for him to do damage,” said Sonny Gray, who faced Contreras 17 times before spending the last two years as his teammate in St. Louis. “I pride myself in being highly competitive and coming at you. He presented that same energy back. It was always very intense, but a very fun competition.”
Contreras’s swing stands out for his bat speed (his average of 76 miles per hour at the point of contact ranked in the 95th percentile last year), his ability to hold his barrel through the strike zone — “He maintains his line for a long time,” said Fatse — and loud contact even when catching the ball deep in the zone. The result is an unusual ability to drive the ball to all fields.
Red Sox officials pointed to a jump in Contreras’s pulled fly ball rate last year — a trait that would play extremely well in Fenway Park for a righthanded hitter — as part of his appeal when acquiring him from the Cardinals in a trade for righthanders Hunter Dobbins, Yhoiker Fajardo, and Blake Aita. But Contreras suggested the spike was unintentional, and that he remains committed to the middle-of-the-field approach.
“It just happened. I didn’t know that I pulled the ball as much as I did last year,” said Contreras. “If you’re not a pull hitter and you try to pull every ball, all you’re going do is hit ground balls to the left side. I’m trying to hit a fly ball to center field, but at the same time, I caught some pitches out front at a good point of contact that I was able to pull.”
Contreras has built his approach around the middle of the field because he has the all-fields juice to clear the fences in any direction — even at Fenway, where righties rarely can drive the ball out to right-center. Contreras defied that pattern as a member of the Cardinals in 2023 by blasting the longest opposite-field homer by a righthanded hitter at Fenway Park in the last four seasons, a 408-foot blast over the Red Sox bullpen.
Still, no righthanded hitter will make a living by searching for homers to the opposite field at Fenway. That said, the park doesn’t only reward pull contact by righties — it also turbocharges the value of balls driven to dead center.
That stands in sharp contrast to Busch Stadium in St. Louis, one of the least-favorable power environments in baseball. Last year, just 143 homers were hit at Busch — second-fewest of any park in the majors.
“It probably doesn’t get talked about enough when it comes to how difficult Busch is [for hitters],” said Cardinals manager Oli Marmol. “When some of these balls will hit the wall somewhere and it’s a double, you’re standing on second, you’re feeling good about your day when you’re 1 for 3 with a double and a walk instead of 0-fer. And then you take that into the next day, and it happens again. Then you start tinkering with your swing. You take more swings. Now you’re more tired. It’s a lot. That’s what people probably don’t talk about a ton, but it is real.”
Contreras downplayed the extent to which Busch hindered him, noting his enjoyment of his time in St. Louis in the first three seasons of a five-year, $87.5 million deal he signed in 2022. But his numbers were worse at home than on the road in all three years he played for the Cardinals, with a .253/.355/.424 line and 21 homers at Busch, and a .268/.361/.491 line with 34 homers on the road.
After moving off of catcher in 2025, he’s now settled into routines as a full-time first baseman — a position that could allow him to challenge his career high in games (138). If that happens, what might Contreras be able to do once removed from the power-suppressing environment of Busch?
“I think,” smirked Marmol, “he’ll have a pretty damn good year.”
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.