Make New York Post a Preferred Source After their season ended with a loss to the Yankees in the AL Wild Card last week, Red Sox brass had a sit-down conversation with star slugger Willson Contreras.
“We actually had a great conversation, [manager Chad Tracy] and I, with Willson yesterday,” chief baseball officer Craig Breslow revealed in a press conference on Monday. “We met for over two hours and we talked about a whole host of things. Many of those things I will keep private just to protect, or preserve the relationship that we have, but it was incredibly constructive. Willson would be the right person to ask directly, but he spoke very, very highly of his time here.”
The conversation came on the heels of Contreras publicly stating his frustrations with Boston’s reliance on data to make decisions and doing a lip-zipping motion to demonstrate his feelings about Tracy pulling Sonny Gray early from their Game 2 season-ending loss.
Boston Red Sox’s Willson Contreras waves his batting helmet as he leaves the field after losing to the New York Yankees in Game 2 of baseball’s American League Wild Card Series, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, in New York. AP Photo/Frank Franklin II Tracy has been widely criticized for his choice to pull both Payton Tolle and Gray early from their starts in the first and second Wild Card games, respectively. The Red Sox went on to get swept by the Yankees, outscored by a combined 18-2.
“Making decisions about data, about all the stuff we cannot do anything about it…At the end of the day, it’s not about data. It’s about executing the game plan,” Contreras said after Boston was eliminated last Wednesday.
Gray expressed his own frustration with Tracy’s decision to pull him after a mere 70 pitches.
Boston Red Sox manager Chad Tracy signals for a pitching change in the fifth inning during Game 2 of the American League Wild Card Series against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post “I think I’m the best pitcher in the American League going through the order a third time. I think that’s a fact,” Gray said after the game. “I would have liked to have been trusted in that moment.”
Tracy signed a three-year extension with the team before the conclusion of the season, removing his interim tag and keeping him with the club through the 2029 season.
