Saturday wasn’t the first time Boston Red Sox first baseman Willson Contreras found himself at the center of chaos during a ballgame this season.

But this time he was surprised, in more ways than one.

Benches and bullpens cleared in the bottom of the fourth inning after Contreras bumped into Minnesota Twins catcher Victor Caratini as he ran into an out at home plate. Caratini quickly rose and caught up with Contreras as he began to walk toward the Red Sox dugout, put his arm around him and they exchanged words.

Then they were surrounded as players from both dugouts and bullpens emptied out onto the field.

“He told me that I should just slide or something like that,” Contreras said via translator following Boston’s 4-2 loss, which dropped the Red Sox to 8-16 at Fenway Park. “And from my perspective if I slid or tried to do something different, I might hit him harder than what actually happened. But at the end of the day, yeah that’s a tough play.”

Contreras said he explained his thought process and Caratini told him “to slide anyway.”

“At the end of the day that’s his point of view,” Contreras said. “We have two completely different perspectives.”

Contreras was visibly frustrated at the end of the five-and-a-half-minute postgame media session when asked whether he thought his headfirst slide into first base, which knocked Kody Clemens’ foot off the bag earlier in the inning, contributed to the Twins swarming the field.

“It was a regular play,” Contreras answered in English. “Don’t try to seek for something where there’s nothing there.”

By his own admission, Contreras isn’t someone who cares about being friendly with opponents. He has a long history with the Milwaukee Brewers, for example, which was evident last month when he received his 24th career hit-by-pitch from them and publicly warned them he would retaliate if it happened again.

“If you play against me and you don’t like me, that’s fine with me, but at some point if we play together you’re going to love me,” Contreras said during his first Red Sox media availability after his December trade from St. Louis. “I play to win, I don’t play to mess around, I don’t play to make friends on other teams.”

Contreras said he never had any issues with the Twins before, nor with Caratini, his teammate and fellow catcher on the 2017-20 Chicago Cubs.

“It wasn’t anything malicious or anything at all, I played with Caratini with Chicago a long time, so there wasn’t any bad intentions behind that,” Contreras said. “I was surprised even more with the Twins that as an organization I respect, and that I never had any kind of problem with them. And even more with Caratini behind the plate. He’s a close friend of mine. So for him to get mad at that, it was kind of surprising. And the fact that the benches emptied, it was surprising as well.”