By Chris Brown / STL Baseball Today | @cbrown_STLBBT | Mar. 2, 2016, 11:00 am CT
By Keith Allison / CC Image / No changes made
Update 3/4 at 6:44 pm CT: MLB Network’s Jon Heyman confirmed the breakdown of Wong’s contract first reported Wednesday by Chris Cotillo of SB Nation: Wong is set to earn $1.25 million in 2016, $2.5 million in 2017, $4 million in 2018, $6.5 million in 2019 and $10.25 million in 2020 before his $12.5 million club option for 2021 with a $1 million buyout.
Original story, updated 3/2 at 1:28 pm CT & 3/4 at 10:31 am:
Eager to remain with the team that’s supported him since he was drafted in 2011, Kolten Wong now appears set to wear the birds on the bat for years to come.
As first reported by Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Cardinals announced on Wednesday the signing of Wong to a five-year extension with a sixth year club option.
The deal locks up the 25-year-old, who was not slated to become arbitration-eligible until after this season, through the 2020 campaign, his would-be first year of free agency, and guarantees the second baseman $25.5 million, according to Goold, who also reports that Wong’s salary increases each year under the contract.
Wong’s 2021 option is valued at $12.5 million, and the deal doesn’t come with any no-trade protection, Mark Saxon of ESPN adds.
“For them going and drafting me and giving me the chance to come up and, after what happened (in 2013), to still continue to believe in me, I wanted to show them I wanted to be there,” Wong told reporters, including MLB.com’s Jenifer Langosch, at the team’s press conference in Jupiter, Florida to announce the deal. “I didn’t want to see what I could go and do in free agency. I wanted to be a Cardinal. If there was any chance that I could do it, I told them, ‘Let’s try to get that done.'”
Drafted in the 1st round of the 2011 amateur draft out of the University of Hawaii, Wong made his major league debut just two years later, and finished third in NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2014. Last year, in his second full season in the majors, Wong hit a solid .262 with 11 home runs and 61 RBIs in 150 games.
With the deal, Wong, who expressed gratitude to the team and it’s clubhouse leaders (including Matt Holliday, Adam Wainwright, and Matt Carpenter, who were in attendance for the press conference), is guaranteed financial security through the end of the decade, while the Cardinals add a promising young player to their core on a very likely team-friendly deal.
“We’ve always looked at trying to retain our best talent,” GM John Mozeliak said. “We always take a lot of pride in trying to sign the players that we develop, that come up through our system. Kolten is a perfect example about what the St. Louis Cardinals are all about. … When we were thinking about how to do this contract and why it all came together because of his desire to want to be a part of this organization.”
