Contreras (fractured middle finger) out for 2024

ST. LOUIS – Willson Contreras’ stop-and-start, injury-filled regular season is officially over, Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol revealed on Monday.

Contreras, who fractured the middle finger on his right hand on Aug. 24 when he was hit by a pitch, underwent a medical evaluation on Monday that determined that he needs at least two more weeks of healing before resuming baseball duties. That effectively ended the catcher’s injury-marred second season with the Cardinals.

“It’s healing well, but he’s still a couple of weeks out before they want him having any type of real impact on [the fractured middle finger],” Marmol said.

Contreras was limited to just 84 games after getting hit by J.D. Martinez’s swinging bat and fracturing his left forearm on May 7 and missing 44 games. Then, he was hit by an up-and-in pitch from Minnesota ace Pablo López late last month that resulted in the finger fracture and has cost him the past 20 games.

Those injuries knocked Contreras out of the lineup for long stretches of time and played a major role in the Cardinals' season-long offensive struggles. Contreras, who signed a five-year, $87.5 million free-agent deal with the Cardinals before the 2023 season, hit .262 with 15 home runs, 17 doubles and 36 RBIs. Had he had enough at-bats to qualify, Contreras’ on-base percentage [.380], slugging [.468] and OPS [.848] would have led the Cardinals this season.

“I mean, you look at his overall production, it was top-end production offensively and we lost him for a decent amount of the season,” Marmol said of Contreras, who hit a game-tying home run in the top of the ninth on July 5 in Washington for one of his biggest highlights of the season. “But when you look at when he was in there, he did a nice job of creating real offense, damage and power and all the things that we’ve talked about that are needed in order to get to where we wanted to get to.

“It’s unfortunate because this is a guy who works extremely hard and wants to be in there more than anybody, but some random injuries kept him from doing that. There’s nothing we could have done about it.”

Expected to be out until the All-Star break after needing a titanium plate and screws installed to stabilize his forearm, Contreras shocked the Cardinals by returning to the lineup on June 24 -- three weeks ahead of schedule. Oddly enough, the Cardinals' best stretch of the season came when Contreras was working his way back from the fractured forearm injury. They were 24-17 during the 44-game stretch with Pedro Pagés and Iván Herrera manning the catching duties. They have gone 10-10 since Contreras left with the finger fracture.

Following a rocky first season in St. Louis where Contreras’ framing and handling of the pitching staff came into question and he was briefly stripped of his starting catching duties, the three-time All-Star worked in the offseason to get his body and his target lower. That work helped him and the Cardinals early in the season when Contreras saw marked improvement in his pitch framing numbers.

For the season, Contreras was credited with one Defensive Runs Saved by Fielding Bible. In terms of his catch framing, he earned a team-best plus-2 rating -- just ahead of Pagés (plus-1) and Herrera (zero), per Baseball Savant.

“There was a lot more time and effort going into the game-planning and the communication with [pitching coach] Dusty [Blake], the starting pitcher and with the bullpen arms, there was a rhythm there that was good,” Marmol said of Contreras’ improvements behind the plate. “There is a lot more comfort in how that communication was taking place and some of that just goes with it being a second year with it. But I do feel like we were headed in a good direction with it, as far as the game-planning side of it.”