He wanted to talk about energy — and in this case, the lack of it. He implored the Red Sox to up the intensity during games.
What Contreras had seen so far from his new teammates, he said, did not match the vibe he saw around this time last year, when the Red Sox whomped his Cardinals for a series at Fenway Park. So he challenged them to attack the task at hand with greater fervor.
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“It needed to be said,” Roman Anthony said, “and he’s the right guy for it.”
Wilyer Abreu echoed: “That motivated us to put a little extra on the games. I think that’s a really good message for the team.”
Added Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Contreras’s fellow veteran newcomer: “We all felt like we have just been playing flat all year and haven’t really been supporting each other the best, I guess. So we just made an emphasis [Saturday] to up the intensity in the dugout, a little more rah-rah, to just be there in the fight with our teammates.”
Since then, the Red Sox (6-9) have won two in a row, setting a season-high in runs on back-to-back days. Altogether, they have taken four of their past five games and grabbed consecutive series wins against Milwaukee and now St. Louis.
Contreras has been in the middle of it all, and not just vocally. Sunday, he finished 4 for 5 with three RBIs, including a two-run home run in the first inning — providing a cushion for righthander Brayan Bello (6⅔ innings, two runs) before he took the mound and setting the tone for the rest of the lineup.
Trevor Story also went 4 for 5 and drove in two runs, upping his average from .131 to .182. Jarren Duran reached base twice, notably on a three-run double in a four-run top of the fourth. The success against righthander Andre Pallante (five innings, seven runs) made for the Sox’ most low-stress game of the young season.
Facing Pallante with two outs in the first inning, Contreras deployed “mind games,” as he called it. As Pallante delivered an 0-1 pitch, which went up and in, Contreras stepped on the plate.
“And everything went south for him,” Contreras said.
He got ahead, 3-1, took a fastball for strike two, and knew a sinker was coming next. It went 411 feet to center.
“You have to take advantage of what you know,” he said.
It was the team’s first long ball since Monday. It also was just the third time this season that the Sox hit a home run with a runner on base
Did Contreras’s words actually matter? Would the Red Sox have scored a bunch the past two games regardless? After all, after he spoke up in the meeting, the Sox’ bats didn’t really wake up until the ninth inning Saturday night.
Manager Alex Cora was skeptical — high energy comes naturally when a team is hitting, he said — but acknowledged Contreras’s growing role in running the clubhouse. Story said the message from Contreras “definitely resonated.”
“Sometimes you’ve got to, in this game, create your own energy,” Story said. “And it’s easy to do when you’re banging and everyone’s hitting line drives everywhere and you’re scoring a lot of runs. It’s easy to do that. But obviously, that hasn’t been the case for us thus far this season.”
Keeping the energy up in the dugout, Abreu said, involved “cheering for everybody, celebrating every base hit, every walk, every everything.”
“It’s always hard when you’re new, but he’s done a great job of letting it kind of play out a little bit,” Kiner-Falefa said. “I feel like [Saturday] was the first time where he was like, all right, things need to change.”
Contreras came to the Red Sox via trade from the Cardinals in December. Through 15 games, he has batted .302 with a .957 OPS — both second on the team behind Abreu. On Sunday, he also made a pair of error-saving scoops of low throws to first base.
“There’s a reason we got him: We needed a righthanded bat,” Cora said. “But we got more than that. We got a guy who is playing great defense at first base. He controls the strike zone. He’s becoming a leader in the clubhouse. It’s fun to have him around.”
Contreras said: “You cannot forget about bringing the energy to the whole environment. That’s when you start winning. That’s how you start winning.”
Tim Healey can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @timbhealey.
