There’s no historic rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers, but Willson Contreras and the Brewers have been at each other’s throats for a long time. After his 24th hit-by-pitch, that long-simmering feud has finally exploded. And none of the players are holding back while talking about the incident.

“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 a message,” Willson Contreras came out and said, after the Red Sox-Brewers game.

The Brewers and the Red Sox were a part of a high-tension game, which the Brewers ended up winning 8-6. But things got hot in the 4th inning when Brandon Woodruff hit Willson Contreras on the hand. Contreras was very angry and immediately started shouting at Woodruff and walked to first.

The moment shifted energy as both dugouts reacted, and tension stayed high throughout the game.

What angered Willson Contreras was not the fact that he got hit, but the fact that it was the 24th time the Brewers hit him, and Woodruff alone has hit him six times in total.

Contreras almost kept his word about “taking out” a player in the same inning.

While running from 1st to 2nd, Contreras slid so hard that some part of the studs caught Brewers’ shortstop, David Hamilton. Although it was legal, you could see the intent behind the slide.

But Contreras did not just talk with his mouth, but also proved it with his bat. Willson Contreras went 3-3 with a walk, a homer, and 2 RBIs. He reached base 5 times, showing that he can walk the walk. But Christian Yelich added another layer of tension after the game ended.

When a reporter asked him about the reaction from Red Sox and Contreras, Yelich said, “We’ve seen that skit for the last 10 years. It’s nothing new.” But Yelich is not the only one who reacted to this; even pitcher Brandon Woodruff chimed in.

Woodruff said, “We’ve been through that — nine years for me. It seems like every year. He’s trying to play a game, and he’s trying to get his side fired up, which is fine. Once I knew what was going on, I wasn’t going to let it affect me on the mound.” He later continued and said he had a job to do, especially with the Brewers looking a little thin.

With the Series starting on a fiery note, it is going to be interesting to see how the rest of the games are going to play out.

Willson Contreras vs. Brandon Woodruff: History and beef

With the tensions between the Boston Red Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers at an all-time high, it is a good time to see if Willson Contreras is right about him getting hit a lot.

The HBP by Brandon Woodruff caused a major stir among the players, and it went on for the full game. But what added more tension to this was the fact that Willson Contreras’s brother, William Contreras, was the one catching for the Brewers when this incident happened.

When you look at things from a statistical point of view, Willson Contreras gets hit often, with 131 HBPs over 4,318 career plate appearances. That equals roughly a 3 percent rate, triple the league average since 2018.

Looking deeper, Woodruff has hit 33 batters across 755.2 innings, slightly above league average. He has a 0.044 HBP rate per inning, and that barely exceeds the typical pitcher’s average of 0.04.

In the six times that Brandon Woodruff has hit Contreras, Pitch data shows that 4 of his 6 pitches were sinkers, 2 were fastballs. Those balls naturally move in, so hitters who choose to stand close to the plate are mostly in the firing line.

Against the Milwaukee Brewers, Contreras has been hit 24 times in 468 plate appearances. That equals a 5.1 percent rate, notably higher than his already elevated career hit rate. And when you consider this, maybe Contreras is right to be angry at the Brewers.

But did Woodruff hit him intentionally? Only Woodruff can answer that.