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For these MLB teams, a winning culture isn’t acquired, it’s grown at home

On Baseball

March 11, 2016 at 9:00 a.m. EST
The Cardinals’ Kolten Wong, a homegrown product for St. Louis, is greeted at home plate after he hit a walk-off solo home run in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series in 2014. (Chris Lee/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)

PORT ST. LUCIE, FLA. — When Kolten Wong casually tossed his bat on the grass here Thursday morning and headed out to take some ground balls under the spring sun, he could do so with comfort and confidence. He knew, then, that he was in the St. Louis Cardinals’ lineup not only for an irrelevant Grapefruit League game that day against the New York Mets, but that his name would appear on the team’s lineup card regularly this season and the next and each year through 2020 — at least.

“You just want that belief from the team that they think you’re going to be able to help them,” Wong said. “That’s the most important thing. I know that this team actually really cares about me and wants me to be a part of this organization for a while.”

It is a comfort the Cardinals, and a select few other teams, regularly afford their own. Last week, Wong — a 25-year-old second baseman not yet eligible for arbitration, much less anywhere near the free agency that comes after six full big league seasons — signed a five-year, $25.5 million contract that keeps him in St. Louis through 2020; the Cardinals hold an option for 2021 at $12.5 million.

This looks like a business deal, and of course it is. But clubs that succeed in ushering their players to the majors, evaluating them for a couple of years and then offering them the security of a long-term deal believe the moves go beyond finances. They help build the culture of the club, one that becomes unshakable because the core of players remains the same.

“These guys have come up with us, they know what we expect of them, and they’ll help the next group of players behind them understand that too,” said Bobby Evans, the general manager of the San Francisco Giants, who have also extended several of their own players. “It creates continuity.”

Where the Cardinals will finish in the NL Central in 2016

There is some evidence that such continuity matters. Over the past several seasons, the Cardinals have extended third baseman Matt Carpenter, right-hander Adam Wainwright, catcher Yadier Molina and lefty Jaime Garcia before they reached free agency. None of them have ever played a game in another uniform. This winter, the Giants signed shortstop Brandon Crawford, who was still two years from being a free agent, to a six-year, $75 million deal. That continued a trend in San Francisco that included extensions for catcher Buster Posey, lefty Madison Bumgarner, right-hander Matt Cain, outfielder Hunter Pence and closer Santiago Casilla.

And, lo and behold, look at the results: The Giants have won three World Series since 2010. The Cardinals have been to the playoffs five straight years and have 23 more wins than the next closest team during that time.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate our ownership doing what they have done with these guys,” Giants Manager Bruce Bochy said last month in Phoenix. “It just makes my job that much easier.”

Where the Giants will finish in the NL West in 2016

It isn’t, though, always an easy evaluation, and there is risk on both sides. The club is betting on a combination of good health and good performance, and the player — if he remains healthy and performs — is potentially giving away millions of dollars in salary in what would have been his first few years of free agency. There are tough tales from both sides. At the start of the 2012 season, the Giants signed Cain to a six-year extension. Though he helped San Francisco to the World Series title that year, he has appeared in just 28 games the past two injury-riddled seasons, posting a 4.83 ERA along the way — and the Giants are on the hook for $49.5 million over this season and next. Shortstop Ian Desmond, who was two years away from free agency, had a seven-year, $107 million offer in 2014 from Washington, the only team he had ever known, but decided to bet on himself. He struggled last season and signed earlier this month with Texas for one year and $8 million.

“They’re not always going to work out,” Evans said last month, not speaking specifically of Cain’s deal. “There’s definitely risk involved.”

But for some players, “risking” giving up a larger payday isn’t even a choice. The baseball world was introduced to Wong in October 2013, when Boston closer Koji Uehara picked him off first base — an embarrassing moment in a regular season game. But to end the fourth game of the World Series, with the tying run at the plate? Wong struggled to hold back tears afterward.

The Cardinals’ organization, though, helped him through it. They eased him into 113 games the next year, his first full season, then made him the full-time starter in 2015, when he played in 150 games. So when the possibility of an extension came up this winter, Wong knew what he wanted. “I was excited,” he said.

And it gave Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny another player in his clubhouse who didn’t have to worry about his spot coming into spring, someone who could just go play.

“I think it’s a good idea to have some young players that have bought into what we’re doing around here, and give them a little security, and also free them up to just go play the game,” Matheny said. “You hope that works out. You take a chance on them, and they take a chance, also. … [But it can] take some things off his mind and just play the game.”

Wong would agree with that, because whatever happens to him this year or next or beyond, he will have $25.5 million in his bank account. The Cardinals have told him, as he said, “They love you, and they want you to be here.”

Then he thought further.

“Then again, it lights another fire under you to play up to that contract,” Wong said, “and do what you can to help this team win.”

Which the Cardinals, and their locked-in-place core, always seem to do.