St. Louis Cardinals: Is Kolten Wong’s bat finally breaking out?

Kolten Wong had a sneaky turnaround at the plate in the second half of the 2018 season after a very lackluster beginning to the season. Has the St. Louis Cardinals’ second baseman finally turned the corner offensively?

One of the aspects of being a high round draft pick that is not discussed enough is the expectations that are put on a player taken in the early rounds. Admittedly there really is a lot of pressure and faith put into a player when a team drafts them that early, but sometimes expectations are placed too high. When the St. Louis Cardinals drafted Kolten Wong in the first round in 2011, those same high expectations were placed on his shoulders.

The Cardinals front office expected a high batting average, polished hitter to bat at the top of the order hitter who would hold his own at second base. It’s impossible to argue that that is what they currently have in the 28 year old. A career .255 batting average with a .325 OBP not only doesn’t scream top of the order hitter, it barely whispers it. What the Cardinals did get was a defensive minded player who hits for some pop occasionally, but one who really came into his own in 2018 with 19 DRS.

Gold Glove snub aside, Wong is known for his glove at second base but not his bat. Any team would want a player like Wong, but he isn’t exactly what the Cardinals were expecting him to be in 2011 when they used their first round draft pick on him.

Wong’s biggest missing piece has always been the bat. In 2017, Wong took a step forward with a .285 batting average and a .376 OBP, but this step forward did not hold into the first half of the 2018 season. Wong’s success in 2017 was mostly luck based as he had an inflated BABIP, and still wasn’t hitting for much power.

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While Wong’s glove flourished in 2018, his bat didn’t keep up in the first half. After batting just .194 over the first month of the season, Wong finished the first half batting .213 with just a .665 OPS. In a normal season fans would’ve noticed more but Wong’s first half was, for lack of a better word, protected by Dexter Fowler‘s .176 average and Matt Carpenter‘s slow start to the season.

Wong’s first half was due mostly to a career high ground ball percentage of 53.3% and rise in soft contact percentage. There may have been some bad luck involved as Wong’s BABIP sat at an anemic .231. While it’s true it could’ve been bad luck, hitting the ball into the ground more than half the time and not hitting it hard is not going to help any batted ball luck.

At the return of the All-Star break though, something clicked for Wong. In the month of July, Wong batted .309 and then kept hitting the rest of the way to finish with a second half batting average of .317. He paired this average with an .823 OPS and that looks more like what the Cardinals expected when they drafted Wong. So how’d he do it?

For starters, Wong hit the ball a lot harder. His soft contact percentage of 24.4% in the first half dropped to just 16.5%. This of course meant that medium and hard contact percentages also jumped up a bit. Wong also raised his line drive percentage from just 15% to 28.4% which jumped his BABIP to a healthy .352.

Now of course all these numbers are connected, and when you hit the ball harder, you get luckier. Wong was mature enough to drop his homer thursting ego and just do what he is good at, hitting line drives. In years past, Wong’s struggles have been from when he gets too homer-happy and swings out of his shoes every at bat. Wong changed his approach to just put the ball in play and get on base in the second half. A second half K% of just 12.1% is a great drop from his career 15.3%.

Wong is in the prime of his career. At 28 years old, he is a cornerstone piece for the Cardinals and hopefully his second half of 2018 will hold and he can keep improving into the player the Cardinals expected him to be when they drafted him.

Wong’s production in the second half of 2018 went mostly unnoticed by fans which is part of why I wanted to write this article for the five of you who read it. Give the man some recognition. Matheny flip flopped often on whether or not to give Wong true starting time while he was manager, and Mike Shildt has gave him his vote of confidence. Let’s see what Wong can do with it now.