In this article we consider homeomorphisms of the open annulus A = R/Z × R which are isotopic to the identity and preserve a Borel probability measure of full support, focusing on the existence of non-contractible periodic orbits. Assume f is such homeomorphism such that the connected components of the set of fixed points of f are all compact. Further assume that there existsf a lift of f to the universal covering of A such that the set of fixed points off is non-empty and that this set projects into an open topological disk of A. We prove that, in this setting, one of the following two conditions must be satisfied: (1) f has non-contractible periodic points of arbitrarily large periodic, or (2) for every compact set K of A there exists a constant M (depending on the compact set) such that, ifž andf n (ž) project on K, then their projections on the first coordinate have distance less or equal to M . * The first author was supported by CNPq-Brasil. The second author was partially supported by Fapesp, CNPq-Brasil and CAPES.