Milwaukee Brewers Sign 2B Kolten Wong to Multi-year Deal

It’s been a slow offseason, to say the least, for the Milwaukee Brewers and the rest of baseball, for that matter. And high up on the to-do list for GM David Stearns is adding more pop to this lineup that ranked near the bottom of the NL in many major statistical categories on offense in 2020.

Well, this afternoon, the Brewers did just that as they agreed to a two-year deal worth $18 million for second baseman Kolten Wong that includes a team option for a third.

The 30-year-old Wong has been in the big leagues since 2013 and has spent his entire career in St. Louis. He holds a career slash line of .261/.333/.384 with an OPS of .717 and an OPS+ of 94. Although it’s worth noting his OPS+ over the last four seasons is 103.

More recently, in 2020, he batted .265 with a .675 OPS. However, in what was an unusual year, take those numbers as you will. During his last full and normal season in 2019, Wong had one of the best years of his career at the plate, slashing .285/.361/.423 with a .784 OPS and an OPS+ of 108—league average is 100.

Wong is an excellent addition to this Milwaukee Brewers lineup. He gets on base, with an OBP of at least .350 in three of his last four seasons, and he doesn’t strike out often—only 15.2 percent of the time over his career, and in four of the last five seasons he’s been below the 15 percent mark.

Defensively, as a back-to-back Gold Glove winner, Wong will be an immediate upgrade over Keston Hiura. According to Baseball Savant, Wong was in the 82nd percentile among second basemen in Outs Above Average, and between 2018 and 2019, he was plus 19 in that category.

So now, what does this mean for the Milwaukee Brewers and Hiura?

Well, there is an opening over at first base for an every day player and it looks like that is now Hiura’s to fill. In a recent interview with reporters, Stearns mentioned that this was a possibility:

"“We have a lot of positional versatility,” Stearns said via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Keston Hiura has spent the entirety of his career at second base but if we need to, we believe Keston can play first base. That’s something we’ll need to discuss if it comes to that.“"

We still have to see how things shake out defensively, but this is the likely scenario at this point. As we’ve seen from Stearns in the past, he isn’t afraid to make some changes defensively in favor of some added pop and on-base ability in the lineup. And that is what Wong gives the Milwaukee Brewers.

Now we wait and see if anything happens over at third base.