Aggressive Discipline for Wong

Maybe it’s foreshadowing the season, maybe it’s giving a player a chance to further work towards his goal, or maybe it just made sense for today but when the St. Louis Cardinals played their intra-squad game earlier today, Kolten Wong was leading-off.

The second baseman’s suggestion of moving to the top of the lineup drew a lot of attention at the team’s Winter Warm-Up, but the thougth process was taken in stride and even encouraged by Mike Matheny.

“I think Mike kind of knew where I was coming from at that time,” said Wong recently. “Obviously, I would never go out there and say I need to hit here. I’m not in a position to do that nor will I ever think I’m in a position to do that.

“I basically came out saying by seeing how Carp finished last year and seeing where our team is heading right now, I think if I was given the lead-off spot, I would love to be our lead-off hitter. I’d love to step in and right out of Spring Training, I’d love to come in and be that guy from the get-go. But if Carp’s going to be our lead-off guy, you can can’t argue with that–the guy’s been the best lead-off guy you could possibly have the last three years.”

Wong led off an inning 184 times last season and hit .269 (47-175) with a .304 on-base percentage. Those numbers were higher when he led off the game (.277/.333) but still leave room for improvement.

“I’m all in for the team,” continued Wong. “At this point, it’s not about my career. I understand that if I play the game and do what I need to do, everything else is going to work out. But I want to win as a team and I want to win a World Series. At the end of the day, that’s the main thing that I’m worried about. Mike understands that and so does the team.”

Whether he bats first, eighth, or somewhere in between, Wong has worked on his approach to be more successful at the plate.

“It’s understanding that I can get into deep counts and still be a good hitter,” he said. “I wasn’t going up there understanding that if I take this guy a little deeper and make him work, he’s eventually going to leave one over the middle. That’s definitely one process I’m going to buy into right from the start of Spring Training–understanding that if there’s a first pitch strike that I don’t think I can drive, I’m going to let it go. I’m going to work at-bats and see if I can get it back to my favor where I can get something that I know I can drive and then be aggressive.”

“We don’t shy away from aggressiveness,” said Matheny. “It’s just aggressiveness in the strike zone. We’ve seen a lot of guys at the top of the order that can get in there with an aggressive approach and still get on base and still work counts. But then a lot of times in this league, especially when you’re facing guys in the top of the rotation, you might only get one good pitch to hit. There’s times you need to be ready for that.”

To his credit, Wong hit .303 (20-66) with 5 home runs when swinging at the first pitch he saw in 2015.  He hit .373 with a 1-0 count, .333 on 2-0, .362 on 0-1, and .373 on 1-1. But, he fell short of .300 in every other count.

“There’s different philosophies at the top,” added Matheny. “Kolten in general just needs to have more plate discipline to not let those good pitches get by and also maximize when he does get that opportunity. A lot of it’s just recognition of the strike zone, recognition of the pitch out of the hand.”