Lack of confidence keeps Wong from his potential

The St. Louis Cardinals led the Boston Red Sox in the 2013 World Series two games to one, but trailed 4-2 with two out in the ninth inning of Game 4.

Hope was kept alive when Allen Craig singled and slugger Carlos Beltran stepped to the plate as the tying run.

Then Kolten Wong, pinch running for Craig, leaned a little too far off first base and was picked off by Boston reliever Koji Uehara. It was the first time a postseason game ended with a pick off.

A couple hours later, Wong tweeted his remorse to Cardinals fans.

“All i want to say is i’m sorry #CardinalNation I go out everyday playing this game as hard as I can and leaving everything on the field.”

Two immediate and somewhat conflicting thoughts came to mind when I saw the tweet.

First, I admired the 22-year-old rookie for stepping up to own his mistake. But then, remembering his red and glassy eyes as he talked through a postgame interviews, I wondered if he shouldered too much personal responsibility for the loss.

Was he punishing himself? Had his confidence been shattered?

Two and a half years later, I’m still wondering the same thing. And so, apparently, is the Cardinals’ manager.

“I think he’s being tough on himself,” Mike Matheny said Thursday before a game with San Diego. “A couple of hard outs and a couple of bad calls and you can tell it starts to wear on him a little bit. The abilities he has and has shown in the past haven’t gone anywhere.”

The Cardinals may have more confidence in Wong’s ability than he does in himself. His emergence in 2013 made home town favorite David Freese expendable. For the next three years, Wong came out of spring training as the team’s starter at second base.

He’s been maddeningly inconsistent.

Wong notoriously will flash great range on balls hit up the middle, only to kick an easy grounder on the next play.

He’ll hit .318 with five home runs and 16 runs batted in over the course of a month (as he did in May of 2015) then get sent back to Triple-A Memphis (as he was in June of 2016).

He’ll bring bursts of power (11 home runs before the All-Star break last season) then quickly lose his stroke (none in the second half).

All players occasionally have to gut it through rough stretches, Matheny says. But Wong’s performance is manic and it seems to take longer for him to shake off his defeats.

“As I see him getting past it and getting through it and then saying ‘wow, I learned a lot from that and don’t ever want to go back,’” Matheny said. “He’s got all the tools to really shine, but he’s going to have to get through it and overcome some of the things that get in his way as far as consistency he knows he should be having.”

Still, the Cardinals displayed nothing but confidence in the five-tool player they drafted 22nd overall in 2011. In March, they invested a $25.5 million guaranteed contract in Wong that, including an option year, keeps him in St. Louis through 2021.

That display of faith should have sent him a powerful message. Maybe it just heaped on more pressure.

“He starts to show glimpses of looking comfortable, but there are a lot of pieces to it,” Matheny said. “We saw it last year, when he gets it right it’s right and he looks good. He’s a guy who should be able to do it all when he gets it figured out.”

Wong, who will be 26 before season’s end, hasn’t been right at all this year. He’s hitting .232 in 194 at-bats and is slugging just .299.

It’s telling that Wong has started just three of eight games since the All-Star Break, even with infielders Matt Carpenter and Jhonny Peralta on the 15-day disabled list.

It’s because ego is as brittle as bone — Wong’s confidence is as damaged as Carpenter’s oblique and Peralta’s thumb.

How long can a competitive major league franchise carry a player who doesn’t believe in his own abilities?

“Being positive is not really an option. If you don’t have it, you’re setting yourself up for failure,” said Matheny . “It doesn’t matter where you are on the spectrum of maturity or learning, you have to believe in yourself.

“If you don’t, it’s not going to be a very long career.”

This story was originally published July 22, 2016 at 6:41 PM with the headline "Lack of confidence keeps Wong from his potential."