Matt Wieters embraces the present
There once was a time when Matt Wieters was the be all and end all of catching prospects, a time when he and he alone – and neither Buster Posey nor Carlos Santana – was considered the future of the position; the next, younger, stronger Joe Mauer.
That was what the future looked like in the not so distant past, but then the present set in.
“The key this year is something that I put a lot of thought into [over the] offseason,” Wieters told The Good Point prior to the 2011 campaign. “To try and not give away any at-bats. And that’s hard to do, but every at-bat you gotta go up there and you gotta be grinding it out no matter what the score of the game is, or at what point in the season it is.”
It’s March and Wieters reiterates the mantra, more to himself than anyone else, as he sheds his jersey in the barebones visitors’ clubhouse of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ spring training facility.
He’s tired, it seems, as he goes through the motions of his post-game routine, perhaps from a busy day batting 4-for-5 with a pair of doubles under the hot Bradenton sun or maybe just from answering the same questions he always answers regarding where, exactly, he expects to be from an individual standpoint now that the ETA of his potential stardom draws near.
“A lot of people were saying they’ve never seen so much hype around a prospect and that he had expectations that were almost impossible to live up to,” says Lauren Tilley lead writer of the Sports Illustrated Baltimore Orioles blog, Birds Watcher.
[php snippet=1]
We’re two and a half months into the 2011 campaign – Wieters’ second full season in the Majors – and the statistics that the soft-spoken South Carolina product have raked in aren’t exactly franchise savior material.
Conspicuously, though, they’re not exactly poor either – especially lately, casting doubt over any individual theories that suggest Wieters’ may or may not have already maxed out his mysterious potential.
After a standout debut towards the end of the 2009 season, all eyes were on Wieters to produce in his first full year as an Oriole. Aside from the occasional hot streak, however, he didn’t.
A .249/.319/.377 slash line with just 55 RBIs and 11 home runs in 2010 left a sour taste in the mouths of many, including the men behind Baseball Prospectus who attested in the 2011 renedition that “Unless he can quickly rediscover the swing that fueled those MVP dreams, it’s possible that they will remain just that, making Wieters’ calling card above-average defense instead of top-of-the-line-hitting.”
Through the first few months of the current season it seemed as though Wieters’ sophomore campaign would wind up much the same as his first; acceptable but unimpressive.
Through his first 28 appearances in 2011, Wieters’ batting average dipped as low as .220, suggesting that the progress manager Buck Showalter had made with the Orioles on the field was having little effect over Wieters’ individual success.
Since that premiere month, however, the 25-year-old backstop’s production on the offensive end has increased considerably. It’s a gradual improvement that one can’t help but imagine traces back to Showalter in one way or another.
“You’re going to do it until you get it right and you could be out there for a short period of time or you could be out there until you get it right,” says Wieters of Showalter, who buoyed the O’s to a 33-23 finish after taking over from Juan Samuel in August, 2010. “Everybody goes to the field everyday ready to work and ready to get things accomplished.”
After signs of life in May – including a 10-game span from May 8-21 in which he strung together 18 hits and eight RBIs – Wieters has taken what appears to be one step further in June. Though the sample size is small (a .323/.344/.387 slash line in 10 games so far), it’s a refreshing sign of hope for the Camden faithful aching for another star to fill the role vacated by Cal Ripken Jr.
“This season, he has fixed his stance to stand taller in the batter’s box and this has helped,” says Tilley. “He’s batting .488 with runners in scoring position, which is great.”
But what it all ends up coming back to, regardless of his success in the box score, is his defense. It’s his one saving grace according to Baseball Prospectus and the one characteristic over which Wieters truly has control – regardless of fan expectations, comparisons or burdens.
“I think what I’m happiest with so far, is his work behind the plate,” says Tilley. “This season, he leads all catchers with most players caught stealing.”
It’s a weapon that Wieters will always have at his disposal, especially useful given the fact that he backstops a Baltimore rotation whose oldest pitcher (Jeremy Guthrie) is just 32 years old.
“I would say it’s his attention to detail,” says Wieters, talking in-depthly on what exactly Showalter brings to the table for an Orioles team hungry to transition into the division’s elite. “He’s going to put in the work and put that responsibility on you to put in the work. Now it’s just a matter of playing the game and whoever’s better that day is going to win.”
With Wieters continuing to emerge as a top-tier defender at one of the most mentally-challenging positions in all of sports – and with his consistently sporadic outbursts of offensive potential that hint at the ceiling that yielded him elite draft status back in 2007 – there exists, perhaps, no better situation for Wieters to be in than Baltimore with Showalter.
With a 33-30 record through June 13, the Orioles have shown they’re not as far off from contending as they’ve been in the past. However much of that can be attributed to Wieters specifically, or rather the excitement that his presence has created since 2009, is subjective.
For all the attention that the American League East gets as overly-polarized, the gap between first (Boston) and last (Baltimore) is the narrowest it is in any of the other divisions (just eight games) – a testament to the fortitude of the Orioles franchise looking to shed the perennial basement dweller label for good.
“Every game we go out there, we’re going to have a chance to beat the team that’s on the other side,” says Wieters. “It doesn’t matter what division you’re going to be in, in order to get to the World Series and win the World Series, you’re going to have to beat everybody.”
He may not top the 3,000-hit mark like Ripken before him, or even serve as the undisputed face of the franchise he was touted as during his time at Georgie Tech, but at least one thing is certain: just because fans and sports writers dwell over the future and past, Wieters has no reason too.
He’s simply taking control of both his and Baltimore’s destiny one at-bat at a time.
[php snippet=1]
