Kolten Wong due for breakout season in 2015

The most famous home run in Kolten Wong‘s young St. Louis Cardinals career is the one that he hit in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series against the San Francisco Giants.

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Unfortunately, this game would be the one and only game that the Cardinals would win in the series. It more than made up for a season if ups and downs as the Wong was sent to Memphis sometime after the season started as more of a scapegoat than anything else.

“I definitely learned a lot throughout the season,” Wong said while talking with reporters at Winter Warm-Up.. “Towards the end, I understood how to get my swing where it needed to be. So far with my hitting, I’ve been hitting with a purpose, understanding how to approach my swing. For me, it’s just keeping my weight back, understanding I don’t need to put all my momentum forward to hit the ball. I can let the ball come in and use my hands. I have enough power and enough bat speed to do some damage.”

The Wong that we saw in October 2014 seems to be a preview for what we should see from the second baseman throughout the rest of his career. In eight playoff starts and 19 plate appearances, Wong delivered seven hits, including three home runs. None of these home runs were more memorable than that of the Game 2 home run, which would never have been possible had Oscar Taveras‘ not tied the game at three runs a piece or Matt Adams giving the Cardinals a then 4-3 lead.

Wong could hit at the top or bottom of the lineup.

“Kolten, down the line, we’ve obviously seen the power, we’ve seen the speed,” manager Mike Matheny said of the second baseman while addressing reporters at Winter Warm-Up. “I believe he could show us something completely different than what he’s done in the past. He’s still a young player. So he could be a guy that’s in any one of those position and do it well.”