{"id":65607,"date":"2024-02-28T15:10:35","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T20:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=65607"},"modified":"2024-02-28T15:10:35","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T20:10:35","slug":"kolten-wong-baltimore-orioles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/02\/28\/kolten-wong-baltimore-orioles\/","title":{"rendered":"Two-Time Gold Glove Winner Inks Minor League Deal with the Orioles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Baltimore Orioles announced Wednesday that they&#8217;ve signed veteran second baseman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/w\/wongko01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kolten Wong<\/a> to a minor league deal. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reported that Wong will join their big league camp as a non-roster invitee. Wong split the 2023 season between the Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Dodgers, batting .184 with 41 hits, four home runs, 27 RBI and a .519 OPS.\u00a0 Wong will join his fifth team during his 11-year career.<\/p>\n<p>The news comes hours after <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/02\/28\/baltimore-orioles-julio-teheran\/\" target=\"_self\">Baltimore signed veteran pitcher<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/t\/teherju01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-02-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Julio Teher\u00e1n<\/a> on a minor league deal.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Orioles have agreed to terms on a Minor League contract with INF Kolten Wong, who will join the club in big-league camp.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Feinsand\/status\/1762907265663729769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 28, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Orioles Sign Kolten Wong<\/h2>\n<p>Wong struggled mightily over the season, hitting .165\/.241\/.227 as a Mariner. But when he was a Dodger he was batting .300\/.355\/.500 with a pair of home runs. Wong struggled with three different pitches the sinker, curveball and sweeper. First, out of 128 sinkers seen, Wong recorded a 0.61 batting average, striking out against the sinker about 18 percent of the time. The two-time Gold Glove Award winner had a .130 batting average and with two strikes he struck out 33 percent of the time facing the curve. Finally, he put up a .143 batting average against the sweeper. Kolten dominated against the fastball putting up a .311 batting average and a slugging percentage of .459. If Kolten wants to be successful in 2024, he&#8217;ll have to be better prepared against off-speed and breaking ball pitches.<\/p>\n<p>Before last season, Wong had been a consistent source at the plate. On defense, he was the game&#8217;s premier option at second base. He has never been a power-hitter or speed bat, but he does have five seasons of double-digit home runs along with five seasons of double-digit stolen bases. Baltimore has the veteran utility depth in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/u\/uriasra01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-02-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ram\u00f3n Ur\u00edas<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mateojo01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-02-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jorge Mateo<\/a>. If the Orioles want a veteran left-handed bat off the bench, Wong could be that option.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: \u00a9 Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Baltimore Orioles announced Wednesday that they&#8217;ve signed veteran second baseman Kolten Wong to a minor league deal. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reported that Wong will join their big league camp as a non-roster invitee. Wong split the 2023 season between the Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Dodgers, batting .184 with 41 hits, four home [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4893,"featured_media":67424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,3,35],"tags":[1108,736,92,5835,158],"class_list":["post-65607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-orioles","category-news","tag-jorge-mateo","tag-kolten-wong","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-ramon-urias","tag-seattle-mariners"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}