St. Louis Cardinals: Wong’s Wednesday

I realize this is a few days late, but I’ve been busy (and admittedly a tad lazy). But even with that, I want to talk about Wednesday’s game, which I was fortunate enough to catch on ESPN.

The opponent was Washington, who had Doug Fister starting. Our St. Louis Cardinals put John Lackey on the mound. Neither pitcher figured in the won loss column, as each left when the score was tied 5-5.

A couple of minor notes before get to the key player of the game:

Matt Carpenter hit a leadoff homer to start the game. This is the second time I was watching a game where he did that. The first was live the week before. There was a buzz already when he came up to the plate in that first game. Carp’s been hot this year, so people were expecting something to happen, and it did. He hit that homer and the whole place erupted. It was one of the many highlights’ of my trip up north for a gathering of St. Louis Cardinals bloggers.

There was no buzz here, as we were the visiting team. If anything, it sucked the life out of the stadium when he did that, which I loved.

Lackey had a rough outing though, giving up five runs in 5.2 innings. Luckily, he had backup, partly Carpenter and Matt Adams, who doubled, homered and drove in two runs. Lackey’s main backup though, was Kolten Wong.

Wong went 3 for 4 with a double and a homer and three RBI’s. While Adams doubled and homered too, as our cleanup hitter, he’s expected to do that. Wong isn’t, so his performance on offense was a nice surprise, at least right now. As time goes by, I think we’ll think we’ll see more production like this from Wong, as his power is developing and he’s becoming a better hitter overall.

What stood out to me though, wasn’t his offense, but his defense. He had the web gem of the night. ranging to his far left, getting to a ball, and a sort of jump pivot and flinging the ball to first, catching the batter in time. It was a great play, and demonstrated his range and defensive ability. If he can maintain and even improve his defense while continuing to improve with the bat, the St. Louis Cardinals will have a special player (and yes he’s already special, but more so) on our hands, hopefully for a very long time.

As always, thanks for reading.