Despite being snubbed out of a Gold Glove, Kolten Wong established himself as one of the best defensive second basemen in the league in 2018 for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Kolten Wong‘s defensive metrics were among the best in the league last season, but his prevalence for missing some of the easy plays held him back a great deal. However, that isn’t what the concern is with St. Louis Cardinals fans.
No, the other side of the ball is where fans are worried about Wong’s ability to contribute. His average dropped off significantly in 2018 to an unappealing .249, but his past performance and solid close to the season leaves something to be hopeful for. From June on until the end of the season, Wong slashed .289/.362/.444, and hit six of his nine 2018 home runs during that stretch.
Wong has shown he can hit, but Wong did look bad enough at times for there to be some cause for concern. While his season post June was solid, it didn’t make up for how horrible he was before then in the minds of St. Louis Cardinals fans. After all, most players slashing .189/.279/.289 through 54 games don’t deserve to be in the majors at all, much less starting.
It is because of this that ZiPS doesn’t really project Wong to improve much from his 2018 season offensively. Even the addition of Paul Goldschmidt doesn’t help, in part because they are so far apart in the order.
BA | .256 |
OBP | .336 |
SLG | .396 |
OPS+ | 97 |
ISO | .140 |
BABIP | .292 |
H | 97 |
HR | 9 |
K% | 16.67% |
BB% | 8.45% |
WAR | 2.1 |
I think that he will have his struggles, but not enough to sink that far down again. He has had two legitimate stretches hitting over .280, and it was only because of a remarkably brutal start to the season.
I would hope to see Wong more than just seven points above his previous year’s batting average with sustained success sandwiching the two. I feel that while he won’t reach the mark again in 2019, Wong’s maintained success of hitting .280+ over 186 of his 235 games over the past two seasons shows me that he has that ability.
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Defensively, there’s no reason to believe that Wong will significantly regress. He wasn’t a stellar defender last year, but the range and quick twitch that he showed last year should carry over to 2019.
That leads us into WAR. I know that the sources are different which changes the formula a bit, but Wong had 2.3 dWAR last season according to Baseball Reference, and hasn’t been below 1 WAR by their calculations since his first season in 2013.
I feel like Wong will round out his defensive game this season and cut down on the mistakes. If he puts that together with solid offense, this St. Louis Cardinals team will be frightening.
My Prediction: .267/.354/.406, 109 H, 10 HR, 8.0% BB%, 14.4 K%, 3.4 WAR
While Kolten Wong has gone through some tough stretches, he is actually a pretty solid hitter when you take a step back. If he can produce sitting comfy in the eight hole with Gold Glove defense, Wong will be one of the most valuable players on the 2019 St. Louis Cardinals.