Contreras (left middle finger) eases pain with creative equipment solutions

TAMPA -- It took a team effort to get Brewers catcher William Contreras back on the field Friday night against the Rays, with the All-Star determined to continue despite a fractured left middle finger.

Brewers coaches Nestor Corredor and Charlie Greene spent the past three days performing surgery on Contreras’ catchers mitt, coming up with a solution to reduce the wear and tear that injured his finger in the first place. While Corredor and Greene worked on gloves, the Brewers’ equipment staff and medical team wrapped his bats with extra padding near the knob, since hitting is what causes the most pain.

And speaking of the medical staff, Contreras also underwent an injection to reduce the pain and swelling in a joint that he showed off in the dugout prior to the Brewers’ three-game series against the Rays.

“I’m thinking like I don’t have anything wrong with my finger. I want to keep playing the whole season,” Contreras said before the Brewers' frustrating, 4-3 loss to open a three-game series at Steinbrenner Field. “I worked too hard in the offseason to be on the [injured list]. I’m going to be with the guys. I’m going to be playing. I’m going to be good.”

He was a lot more optimistic on Friday than he was Tuesday night, when a couple of dropped pitches showed just how badly Contreras was hurting, and prompted the Brewers to take an X-ray to confirm the continued existence of a fracture that dates back to last season. On a scale of 1-10, Contreras said, the pain was at an 8-10 level that night.

By Friday, he was feeling significantly better, saying the pain was only in the 3-5 range, and he immediately proved it by lining a 112.4 mph RBI single into center field in the first inning.

That was one of the good moments for Contreras and the Brewers on Friday. There were also plenty of bad, including when Contreras dropped a foul pop-up in the seventh inning when it hit the newly-stiffened portion of his glove. Add that to a list that included Jackson Chourio’s first career error which spotted the Rays their first run, an obstruction call on third baseman Caleb Durbin giving the Rays a go-ahead run in the sixth (which manager Pat Murphy characterized as the turning point of the game), and Jared Koenig’s bases-loaded walk -- the first for a Brewers pitcher this season -- bringing in the eventual deciding run in the eighth.

“One of those games,” Contreras said. “We have to play a little bit better, but I think everybody is on the same page. We know we can’t lose those games.”

The Brewers and Contreras agree that they are a better team right now with their star catcher playing through pain instead of being sidelined for an extended stretch of healing. They figure that the problem originated from the unique way Contreras wears his glove, with his index finger in the slot where the middle finger usually goes, and the other three fingers in a slot designed for two. It helps give Contreras the feel he likes to frame pitches, but the side effect is that when he catches a foul tip or takes a foul ball off the pinky side of his glove, it tends to severely bend back those three fingers, with the middle finger particularly exposed.

So, Corredor and Greene went to work. The solution was to remove the stitches from the outside of the wrist all the way up to the fingertips and insert a stiff material to match what is already on the thumb side catchers gloves.

“Charlie and Nestor have taken apart more catchers gloves in the last three days than you can believe,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.

Contreras applauded the effort.

“That was crazy, because they were trying to find different things to put inside the glove,” Contreras said. “And they fixed it. They found the spot to put something.”

“I’m telling you, nobody in baseball has a glove like that,” Corredor said. “I said we have to sell this to Rawlings and make some money off it.”

The real reward would be a return to form for Contreras, who led Brewers regulars with an .831 OPS last season and finished fifth in NL MVP Award balloting. His OPS entering Friday night was sitting at just .689.

“He didn’t want to get the X-ray, but the reason we did that is it started to affect his mindset,” Corredor said. “When you see balls clanking off the glove, and when you see William Contreras, three at-bats in a row, swinging at one pitch and taking the other two, that bothered me a lot. He was willing to do the X-ray, but he was making clear that, ‘I’m not going to stop playing.’”

“Bro, this guy is a beast,” said veteran Brewers starter Jose Quintana, who surpassed 2,000 career innings in a no-decision against the Rays. “You can’t find guys like him around the league easily.”

With one game in the books, Contreras characterized the adjustments as, “OK.” He shrugged off a question about how his finger felt swinging the bat, saying, “I don’t think about the pain during the game.”

“He’s going to feel it the rest of the way,” Corredor said, “but we did everything humanly possible to try to keep him on the field.”