On October 6, 2026, William Contreras did something almost no baseball player ever does: he put a number on the elephant in the room. The Brewers catcher said publicly that he would never want to play for the Yankees or the Mets — and his reason was as direct as his swing. New York State takes roughly 52% of the check.
The timing couldn’t be more relevant. Contreras is set to hit free agency after 2026, and his name is already circulating as one of the most coveted catchers on the upcoming market.
No filter, percentage included
In baseball, players almost never verbalize the tax math this explicitly. Agents do it behind closed doors. Analysts write about it in niche columns. But the player himself rarely says it out loud, with team names and a percentage attached. Contreras broke that unwritten rule.
Asked whether there were teams he’d never want to play for, his answer was immediate: the Yankees, the Mets, and a 52% tax rate as the only explanation. No mention of the media pressure, the stadiums, or the winters. Just the numbers.
And the number checks out. New York State’s top marginal income tax rate reaches 10.9%, New York City adds up to roughly 3.9% on top of that, and the federal marginal rate sits at 37%. For a player earning between $5 million and $25 million, the combined marginal burden can land right around that 52% figure. Compare that to Wisconsin, where Contreras currently plays — the state’s top rate is about 7.65%, with no comparable city tax layered on.
Why this matters right now
Contreras isn’t just any player floating an opinion. At the time of this statement, he ranks among the six most sought-after catchers for the 2026-27 MLB offseason according to Spotrac. His arbitration deal worth $9.4 million with Milwaukee expires in 2026, with a club option for 2027. If that option isn’t picked up, the market opens — and declarations like this tell every interested team exactly what they need to put on the table to make the math work.
Here’s the nuance his comment leaves out: the taxes are the player’s burden, not the team’s. The Yankees or Mets could theoretically offer a higher salary to offset the difference — what’s informally called a gross-up. What Contreras is really saying isn’t that those teams can’t sign him. It’s that he, personally, doesn’t want to live with half his paycheck going to the government.
He’s not the first player to think this way. The phenomenon of players steering clear of New York or California for tax reasons has been documented in free-agent negotiations for over a decade, and it intensified after New York raised its marginal rates in 2021. The difference is almost no one says it in public. Contreras did.
Is he worth chasing anyway — just somewhere else?
Short answer: yes. In the 2026 regular season, Contreras appeared in 147 games, hit 18 home runs, drove in 94 runs, batted .270, and posted an OPS of .758. For a 28-year-old catcher, that’s frontline production. His 2.9 WAR (Baseball-Reference) places him among the most valuable offensive catchers in the game.
The Statcast numbers add even more context. His average exit velocity sits at 90.3 mph, and his squared-up rate ranks in the 90th percentile — meaning he makes elite, clean contact at an elite rate. That’s not a hot streak. That’s a repeatable swing.
The numbers behind the name
- Plate appearances: 640
- Home runs: 18
- RBI: 94
- AVG: .270
- OPS: .758
- xwOBA: .334
- Exit velocity (avg): 90.3 mph
- Barrel rate: 8.5%
- Hard-hit rate: 44.1%
- Bat speed (avg): 73.5 mph
- Squared-up rate: 90th percentile (elite)
One more thing: don’t confuse the brothers
William (28, Brewers) and Willson Contreras (34, Red Sox) are brothers, both born in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela 🇻🇪, and both members of Venezuela’s 2026 World Baseball Classic championship team. Different teams, different contracts, different stages of their careers. This declaration is William’s — the younger one, the one about to test the open market, and the one who just made his geographic conditions crystal clear.
