Willson Contreras Calls His Brother the Real NLCS MVP, Then Deletes the Posts

Milwaukee had been waiting 44 years for a pennant, and the argument that followed its sweep of Los Angeles was not about the pitching or the comeback. It was about a trophy handed to one Brewer, started by the brother of another one watching from Boston. Willson Contreras posted three Instagram stories making the case that the NLCS MVP should have been his younger brother William, then deleted two of them once they had been screenshotted and shared, EssentiallySports reports. The one line he left hardest to take back is the one still travelling.

What did Willson Contreras actually post?

Three stories, in rising order of heat. The first showed William Contreras wearing a crown, with THE REAL MVP written at the bottom. The second posted William’s postseason statistics with the caption Numbers don’t lie. The third read, in full: Tell me where you are from, and I’ll give you the MVP, EssentiallySports reports. Talkin’ Baseball screenshotted the set and noted that Contreras had deleted two of the stories. The deletion did what deletions on the internet usually do. By Friday the screenshots were the story, on a morning when Milwaukee should have been reading about a sweep built on a bullpen that retired all 15 men it faced in Game 2 and a captain who was benched for Game 1 and drove in the winner anyway.

What did the deleted line claim, and what did it not say?

Less than it was read as, and more than a compliment to his brother. Contreras did not name a voter, cite a ballot or use the words bias or racism, and he has offered no explanation since taking the stories down. What readers heard in the line, Albat reports, was a suggestion that nationality helped decide the award: William Contreras is Venezuelan, Jake Bauers is American, and the sentence only works as an argument if where a player is from counted for something. Albat is equally clear on the other side of the ledger. There are no official reports or formal complaints of bias in the NLCS MVP vote, and MLB has released no statement on the posts. So the verified story is a family grievance with an implication inside it, amplified by a screenshot, not an allegation anyone has formally made or evidenced. This is the second time in a fortnight that Milwaukee’s October has produced a side argument louder than a game, after the row over the ad breaks in the playoff broadcasts pulled in a Dodgers outfielder and a Hall of Fame father.

Why do the numbers argue both ways?

Because Willson posted the wrong stat line for the award he was disputing, and it still nearly works. His screenshot carried William’s full postseason numbers: a .367 batting average, a .457 on-base percentage, a .700 slugging percentage, three home runs and five RBIs in 35 plate appearances, EssentiallySports reports. Those are real numbers, and they are better than Bauers’ full postseason line. The problem is the jurisdiction. The NLCS MVP is awarded for the championship series alone, four games against Los Angeles, and inside those four games the brothers’ case narrows sharply: William hit .357 but drove in three runs, every one of them in a single night, while Bauers drove in six and produced a decisive hit in three different games, Reuters reports. A trophy for October would have a genuine argument behind it. A trophy for the NLCS has the calendar against it.

What did William Contreras do in the four games the award covers?

One huge night and three quieter ones, plus the catching. In Game 2, the night Milwaukee’s own starter threw two runs to the Dodgers and the Brewers climbed out anyway, William tied the game with a fifth-inning home run and put Milwaukee ahead with a sixth-inning RBI single, finishing 3-for-4 with three RBIs, EssentiallySports reports. Albat’s game-by-game account has him going hitless in Game 1, collecting one hit in each of Games 3 and 4, and finishing the series 5-for-14. In Game 4 he also caught a planned bullpen game in which four Milwaukee pitchers held Los Angeles scoreless over the final seven innings, Reuters reports, the kind of work that never shows in an MVP screenshot. It was a strong series. It was also a front-loaded one, and MVP votes tend to follow the last big swing rather than the first.

What did Jake Bauers do in those same four games?

The late things, repeatedly. Bauers went 4-for-14 with a home run, six RBIs and a .412 on-base percentage, and he collected a hit in all four games, Reuters and USA Today report. In Game 3 he ended an 11-pitch at-bat against Blake Snell with a go-ahead two-run home run. In Game 4, with Milwaukee trailing 4-0, his two-run ground-rule double started the comeback and his bases-loaded walk in the fifth tied the game, Bleacher Report reports. He is the first Brewer ever named NLCS MVP; when Milwaukee last reached the World Series in 1982 the series MVP went to a player on the losing team, Bleacher Report notes. None of that makes William’s series small. It makes Bauers’ the easier one to vote for in the hour after a clincher, which is when these awards are decided. Pat Murphy’s own summary of his team was that the gamers beat the Hall of Famers; the MVP vote followed the same logic.

What happens next, on the field and online?

The baseball moves first. Milwaukee waits for the ALCS winner, Cleveland or Tampa Bay, with the World Series opening at American Family Field, and William Contreras will catch it as a central figure in the run his brother says was undervalued. The posts themselves have the shorter life. Willson has not repeated the claim, William has not endorsed it in public, and neither MLB nor the Brewers has treated it as anything requiring an answer, Albat reports. What survives is a familiar October pattern, the same one that turned a fan’s one-of-one card into a jersey-and-cleats trade with Milwaukee’s ace earlier in this run: the series ends, and the argument about what it meant starts somewhere else entirely, in this case in a sibling’s deleted stories.