Willson Contreras Named NL Player of the Week

So, uh, Willson Contreras has been having himself a decent stretch of games. The last week was particularly good, as you may have noticed. Turns out Major League Baseball noticed as well, which is why the Cubs catcher was named NL Player of the Week Monday afternoon.

In six games, Contreras hit .455/.478/1.182 with a .666 wOBA and 321 wRC+, which means he was 221 percent better than the average hitter in that time. His 5 home runs and 13 RBI led all of baseball over the last week and his 0.8 fWAR is second to only Baltimore’s Tim Beckham (0.9), who won POW in the AL.

Contreras is now up to 3.2 fWAR on the season, where he ranks behind only Buster Posey (3.9) among catchers. But the crazy thing is that he was able to rack up nearly a full win of value over only 25 plate appearances. Of the 541 MLB players to log at least 30 plate appearances this season, 398 have failed to generate 0.8 fWAR.

I think the Cubs might just have something special in this young man.