MILWAUKEE (AP) — Milwaukee Brewers All-Star catcher William Contreras agreed to a $9.4 million, one-year contract Thursday just before the scheduled start of an arbitration hearing in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The deal includes a $14.5 million team option for 2027 that converts to a mutual option if Contreras finishes fourth or better in this year's NL MVP balloting.
The agreement was $175,000 above the midpoint between the $9.9 million Contreras had requested and the $8.55 million offered by the team when they exchanged proposed salaries last month.
This marks the second straight year in which the two-time All-Star has agreed to terms on a deal shortly before a potential arbitration hearing. Contreras agreed to a $6.1 million deal last year that included a $12 million option for 2026 with a $100,000 buyout. The three-time defending NL Central champion Brewers declined that 2026 club option.
Contreras, 28, batted .260 with a .355 on-base percentage, 17 homers and 76 RBIs in 150 games last year while dealing with a fractured left middle finger for most of the season. He had finished fifth in the NL MVP voting in 2024 and was 11th in the balloting in 2024, his first year with Milwaukee.
His 2025 performance represented a dip in production after he won Silver Slugger awards each of his first two years with the Brewers.
Contreras batted .281 with a .365 on-base percentage, 23 homers and 92 RBIs in 2024. He hit .289 with a .367 on-base percentage, 17 homers and 78 RBIs in 141 games in 2023.
He was selected to the All-Star Game in 2024 as well as in 2022 with the Atlanta Braves.
Contreras is on track to become eligible for free agency after the 2027 World Series.
The Brewers acquired Contreras along with reliever Joel Payamps in December 2022 as part of a three-team trade with the Atlanta Braves and Athletics. The Brewers only gave up outfielder Esteury Ruiz in the deal.
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FILE - Milwaukee Brewers' William Contreras runs down the first base line during the second inning in Game 1 of baseball's National League Division Series against the Chicago Cubs in Milwaukee, Oct. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf, File)
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Just as Guatemala began to elect magistrates to its highest court on Thursday in a test of strength of its democratic institutions, prosecutors said they raided two voting locations in what lawyers denounced as electoral interference.
The latest action — carried out by the internationally criticized Attorney General's office — reignited tensions in a yearslong battle to root out endemic corruption plaguing the Central American country's institutions.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo and his anti-corruption allies have often clashed with prosecutors they accuse of rotting Guatemala’s justice system and making politically motivated arrests.
The agents who carried out the raid were led by Leonor Morales, a prosecutor sanctioned by the United States for trying to overturn Arévalo's presidential win in 2023. Morales has also previously persecuted judicial officials fighting corruption. He refused to provide more information because it was an open investigation.
“Information (about the raid) cannot be shared, and I therefore request that the media be removed” from the premises, said Morales, whose team also briefly tried to block the entrance of lawyers who wanted to vote, though eventually voting resumed with agents watching.
Guatemala’s Constitutional Court has been at the center of the country's battle against corruption. The court has ruled in high-profile cases on the future of an international anti-corruption commission and the release of a former president charged with corruption.
The Constitutional Court comprises five magistrates, and the president, Supreme Court of Justice, Congress, University of San Carlos and the country’s bar association each select one. Almost all of the current magistrates are hoping to be reelected.
On Thursday, the bar association was holding its election to pick its magistrate and alternate, the first for the new Constitutional Court. The other institutions will pick their representatives in the coming weeks.
A new attorney general will also be elected in the coming months to replace Guatemala’s outgoing top prosecutor Consuelo Porras, sanctioned by the United States and European Union for undermining democracy.
President Arévalo called the selection process “important and critical for democracy,” in an interview with The Associated Press last month.
“The democratic development of the country is on the line, the possibility of having democratic institutions where a culture of respect for the rule of law is built,” he said.
The Constitutional Court is Guatemala’s highest and its decisions cannot be appealed.
At the Constitutional Court, all 10 positions — five magistrates and five alternates — will be elected.
The high court’s importance is undisputed and that has drawn corruption into the selection previously.
When former President Jimmy Morales terminated the mandate of an anti-corruption commission known as the CICIG in 2019, the Constitutional Court acted as a key democratic safeguard and ruled his decision unconstitutional.
But the court took a turn when new magistrates were elected in 2021.
Human rights lawyer Rafael Maldonado said that “the last five years there has been a Constitutional Court made up of dark characters who have stopped any advance there could be in Guatemala.”
For example, the court in April 2024 upheld the release from prison of former President Otto Pérez Molina (2012-2015), who had been convicted in two separate cases of corruption.
Five judges and their backups will also be elected to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. In non-justice positions, a new federal comptroller will be elected, as will a rector for the University of San Carlos of Guatemala.
The elections are being closely watched because of the impact they can have on Guatemala’s justice system. The Organization of American States, a regional body, created a Special Mission for the Strengthening of Democratic Institutions in Guatemala to monitor the nomination processes and the European Union sent its own observation group.
Maldonado said the elections will determine “the consolidation of access to justice.”
Political analyst Renzo Rosal said the elections will “put democracy to the test.”
“It is the perfect laboratory to see how the institutions are steered toward greater cooptation, control and loss of independence, which has a direct affect on the citizenry,” he said.
Under Attorney General Consuelo Porras, Guatemala's Public Ministry has been criticized for undermining corruption investigations and carrying out political prosecutions against former prosecutors, judges and journalists who reported corruption.
Porras’ office also played a key role in barring top anti-corruption candidates from running in the 2023 elections. It then pursued Arévalo’s political party in what many saw as an attempt to keep him from taking office after his surprising victory in a tumultuous election.
Arévalo requested her resignation, but she refused. He does not have the power to remove her before her eight-year run in the role ends in May. She is seeking election as a magistrate to the Constitutional Court.
The constitution says the president gets to select the attorney general every four years from a slate of six candidates proposed by a nominating committee made up of the president of the Supreme Court, the deans of the country’s law schools, the president of the board of the bar association and the president of the bar association’s honor tribunal.
Porras was first selected by President Morales in 2018 and then reelected by his successor President Alejandro Giammattei. She was accused of protecting both former leaders from investigation for corruption, something she has denied.
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Lawyers leave after voting in an election of magistrates to represent the bar association on the Constitutional Court in Guatemala City, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Guatemalan General Attorney Consuelo Porras prepares to cast her ballot in the election of magistrates representing the bar association on the Constitutional Court in Guatemala City, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Guatemalan General Attorney Consuelo Porras, center, is escorted by her security team after voting in an election for the magistrates who will represent the bar association on the Constitutional Court in Guatemala City, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Guatemalan General Attorney Consuelo Porras casts her ballot in the election of magistrates representing the bar association on the Constitutional Court in Guatemala City, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
