The moment Brandon Woodruff’s third-inning sinker ran in and clipped Willson Contreras on the hand Monday night at Fenway, it sparked a fire that’s been simmering for years.

Contreras didn’t try to hide it. He barked at Woodruff the entire walk up the first-base line, so heated that his younger brother William — the Brewers’ catcher — had to step out and physically guide him toward the bag. And it didn’t stop there. A few pitches later, on a fielder’s choice where he was already out, Contreras came flying into second with his cleats up and tore a hole in David Hamilton’s pants. Pat Murphy was out of the dugout immediately, barking. The umpires let it stand. Legal or not, everybody in the park understood what that slide was.

Then the broadcast keyed everyone in on what set Contreras off: this was the sixth time Woodruff has hit Contreras in his career. Six. At some point, that stops feeling like a coincidence.

You Could Feel This One Coming

This started to get ugly back in April of 2021. That was the first real turning point.

The Brewers had already hit him before, but that series at Wrigley is where it stopped looking like ordinary inside pitching and started looking, at the very least, like a pattern. On April 5, Devin Williams drilled Contreras in the helmet. The very next night, Brad Boxberger hit him again — this time on the left arm — and that one brought the benches onto the field. By that point, Contreras had been hit six times in his last 11 games against Milwaukee.

One or two, you can maybe shrug off. Six in 11 games? That's where the doubt starts to disappear. And if you watched Contreras that week, you could feel that shift in real time. He wasn’t reacting like a guy who thought he had just gotten clipped again.

David Ross basically confirmed as much afterward. He said he had no problem with Contreras boiling over because, at that point, anybody would have.

It Didn't Stop There

This rivalry has followed Contreras year after year, team after team. Back in 2022, after yet another Brewers-Cubs game full of plunkings and bench-clearing tension, Woodruff admitted the Brewers had hit "one guy in particular" a lot, but insisted it was just part of the plan to pitch him inside. That was the running explanation then, and it's the same explanation now.

The problem for Milwaukee is that this has gone on far too long to shrug off as just a weird coincidence. After Monday night, Contreras has now been hit by Brewers pitching 24 times in his career. That is not just the most against any one team — it is 10 more than any other club has hit him. Woodruff alone has drilled him six times. After doing some research, there have been just six other hitters who have been nailed more than six times by the same pitcher — so that just goes to show you how rare this truly is.

Yes, some of it is volume. Contreras spent a decade in the NL Central and has faced Milwaukee 121 times, more than any other opponent. But even with that context, this has clearly gone past normal baseball and into something both sides think about every time they see each other.

And that is why Monday felt like the latest chapter in a feud that keeps finding new life. Contreras has heard the same line for years — that nobody is trying to hit him, that it is just the way they pitch him. He is clearly done buying it. From his point of view, 24 times isn't bad luck. It's a pattern.

Was the Slide Dirty?

Contreras was already out, and he still went in hard enough to rip Hamilton’s pants. Naturally, Pat Murphy came out to argue it, because anytime a middle infielder gets hit like that, you at least take a look.

But here’s the thing: it wasn’t dirty. Murphy even said as much after the game. It was a legal, within-the-rules slide — the kind you see all the time from guys trying to break up a play. That’s what makes it interesting, though. Just because it may not have been dirty, doesn't mean there was no message behind it. And that’s exactly what this felt like.

Contreras didn’t need to cross the line to get his point across. The timing, the intensity, the fact that it came just after getting hit again — it was clear. It wasn’t reckless. It wasn’t cheap. It was controlled, but intentional. And judging by the reaction on both sides, everybody understood it the same way.

This One’s Not Settling Down

Contreras is 33, in his first year in Boston, playing a new position. He's still got a lot of game left. The Red Sox and Brewers will see each other again. Heck, they still have two games left to play in this series.

Wilson let the entire Brewers organization know that if this happens again, he won't be as calm as he was on Monday:

“It’s not just the hit-by-pitch, it’s the 24th pitch they’ve hit me in my career — 24th. That’s the sixth time he has hit me, and they always say, ‘I’m not trying to hit you.’ That gets old. So next time they hit me again, I’m going to take one of them out. That’s the message.”

It's not complicated — some guys just rub each other the wrong way and their games carry a little extra weight because of it. That's been true of Contreras and Milwaukee for five years now. Nothing on Monday suggested that's going to change anytime soon.

All stats courtesy of MLB.com and Baseball Reference.

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