St. Louis Cardinals: Is Kolten Wong a sell-high candidate?

As the St. Louis Cardinals look at options to trade, the biggest trade piece they have might be their 2019 MVP. Should the team sell high on Wong?

Since Kolten Wong was a first-round draft pick in 2011, everyone wondered what the undersized Hawaiian would become for the St. Louis Cardinals. I don’t mean undersized as an insult as he has referred to himself as “the pebble,” and at 5-9, 185lb, he isn’t physically imposing.

Rising through the minor leagues, Wong proved what he could do with his hit tools and defense, but struggled to put it together in the Majors. Now finished with his seventh year as an MLB player, we’ve seen many different versions of Wong.

We saw an attempted power hitter in 2014 (12 homers), the gap-aiming slap hitter in 2017 (.285 average, 27 doubles), and multiple years (2015, 2016, 2018) of the glove-only Wong who looked lost at the plate. We also saw Wong flip on what kind of runner he wanted to be. With two years (before 2019) of 15+ steals and three years of less than 10. Wong really changed a lot from year to year.

Along with his bat, his confidence in the field changed. He always showed the ability to make the huge plays but at times earlier in his career, he would struggle to make routine plays randomly, leading to odd errors. These struggles were in part due to confidence issues both in Wong’s own self-confidence as well as the wavering confidence of a certain former manager.

Since the managerial change though, Wong has been able to put it all together and be the most complete player that the front office and fans thought he would be.

In 2019 especially, Wong has been worth every penny of the $6.5M he earned.

Starting every day at second base, Wong put together a .285/.361/.423 slash line, Wong worked his way to the top of the order by the end of the year, providing a much-needed spark down the stretch to an at times stagnant offense.

Clearly no longer trying to hit homers, the game came to Wong a lot better and he finished near career highs with 25 doubles and 11 homers. With Mike Shildt’s run-heavy offense, Wong led the team with 24 steals. He showed swagger and on-base skill and was finally able to secure his first Gold Glove after another stellar year with the glove. Wong was arguably the team’s MVP.

With a very team-friendly two years left on the 29-year-old’s contract, is now the time to try and sell high on Wong?

This will get at least some backlash at first thought because he is finally becoming the player fans thought he was going to be. But looking around the diamond, the Cardinals need to make some upgrades, and if they aren’t going to go after big free agents (they aren’t), trade is the way to go. Wong is one of the most valuable trade pieces on the team.

Another way to look at it is as if Wong was a stock you owned. After years of sticking with this middling stock, showing flashes of growth then stalling, the stock shoots up to where you’ve dreamed it always would go to. The fallacy is to think that the stock is going to keep going up and up and up, but it won’t. That’s not how these things work.

Regression to the mean always happens. How much is the question.