Matt Wieters, the man Baseball Prospectus dubbed one of the "most disappointing prospects of all time," leaned against his locker recently and chuckled as he listened to the question.
Is it possible, the Orioles catcher was asked, that you've been called overrated and over-hyped so frequently in your brief career that the pendulum has swung back and you can now be considered underrated?
"I don't know," Wieters said, breaking into a thin smile. "I don't think you can really worry about it, because once that first pitch is thrown, all those ratings don't really mean much."
Wieters has always been less obsessed with where he ranks, at least statistically, than the rest of the baseball universe. Even when he was lanky kid growing up in Goose Creek, S.C., and would sit in front of his television and try to emulate Chipper Jones' smooth tempo with a bat in his hands, he didn't give it much thought. He just wanted to play and leave all the analysis to those standing outside the white lines.
But few modern players have seen their game receive such effusive praise one minute, then be subjected to such intense criticism the next. Even though Wieters won't turn 25 until late May, he has already been declared a bust of epic proportions by the people who obsess over baseball statistics and projections as though they are a beautiful math problem.
Once considered a Golden Boy in the eyes of most sabermetricians, Wieters was virtually written off after only a season and a half in the majors by the same people who predicted he would be better than Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer.
"Whatever his [minor league batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage] .343/.438/.576 rates seemed to portend, that's gone," Baseball Prospectus wrote about Wieters last month, "along with the notion that he's a switch-hitter (he has hit .230/.278/.344 from the right side) or a power hitter. His glove and the dream of what might have been will keep him around for years, but stardom now seems spectacularly unlikely."
Yet as Wieters' stock with stat gurus has plummeted, it has soared within baseball's camp of old school traditionalists. Ask the Orioles what has been the most important cog in their surprising start this year, and almost to a man they'll credit Wieters and the way he has guided an inexperienced pitching staff through the first week and a half of the season.
"I think he needs to get more credit than he's already gotten," Orioles pitcher Zach Britton said.
"I know some people have been praising him, but he deserves a lot more credit than we do. Obviously, we execute pitches, but he's the thinking guy out there. He's doing his job and reading the hitters. I don't know how he was last year, but he's pretty amazing, in my opinion."
Even though he's just a rookie, Britton has some insight. Wieters coaxed him through his first career start as he held the Tampa Bay Rays to three hits over six innings despite not having great control.
"I had so much confidence in him that once he put the finger down, I threw it. You've got to have faith in what you're throwing, and I felt like I had that. That's a credit to him," Britton said. "I think you'd rather have a catcher that's going to be amazing behind the plate than a guy that's going to hit .400 but not be able to handle a pitching staff. He can hit and he can handle the pitching staff, so it's kind of the best of both worlds."
Hard to measure
It does make for an interesting argument: Just how important, and valuable, can a catcher be if his OPS is under .700, as Wieters' was in 2010? How do you analyze a player when his strengths are categories that can't be fully quantified: defense, pitch selection and leadership?
Against Tampa Bay in the first three games of this season, Wieters had what Orioles manager Buck Showalter called one of the best defensive series he has seen from a catcher. He threw out runners, he blocked the plate brilliantly, he snared three foul tips — including one in his shinguard — and he called a flawless game. The Orioles' starting pitchers gave up one run in three games. Pitching coach Mark Connor said he sat in the dugout for three days and "marveled" at the way Wieters called the games, then compared his feel for the game to Boston Red Sox veteran Jason Varitek's.
Sabermetricians such as Bill James, as well as several analysts for Baseball Prospectus, have argued that, if you examine a large enough sample size, there is no proof that catchers have a significant effect on pitcher performance. Traditionalists like Showalter, however, scoff at that line of thinking.
"I think it's pretty obvious [they do]," Showalter said. "It's a constant conversation among pitching coaches and hitting coaches and everybody. You actually change some of your offensive approach depending on who is catching for the other team. There is a whole different look to it when certain guys are catching with certain pitchers. I would disagree with that [statistical analysis] pretty strongly."
Wieters didn't earn Showalter's praise by accident. From the time he arrived in Baltimore in 2009, Wieters' routine has been simple but consistent. He'll show up to the ballpark several hours before his teammates, usually about 1 p.m. for a night game, and hit the video room. Once inside, he'll cue up tape of opposing hitters over their past few games, as well as how they've fared against similar pitchers. He takes notes and looks for tendencies. Like a poker player trying to sniff out a bluff, he studies them for tells.
"I don't think Wieters gets enough credit for what he does behind the plate," Orioles pitcher Chris Tillman said. "No one sees him in here doing the homework, watching tape, giving us advice, telling us what he thinks. If something is wrong, he'll fix it. He's the one who sees the ball coming out of our hands, and he's not afraid to tell you, 'Hey, let's get going.' "
One can make the case that no Oriole has leaned on Wieters more this year than Tillman. In his first start of the season, against Tampa Bay, Tillman didn't shake off his catcher once, and over six innings, he didn't surrender a hit.
But what happened in his second start might have been equally important. Tillman didn't have his best stuff and had to struggle through a rough first inning in which he allowed two runs and threw 32 pitches. But Wieters calmed him, and he rebounded with three shutout innings before he was chased in the fifth. It wasn't a good start, but it also wasn't an implosion, and the Orioles rallied to win, 9-5.
"The main thing Wieters has with me is, early on in games, I try to find my way through," Tillman said. "I try to throw a strike here, throw a strike there. He's pretty good about telling me: 'Let it go. You've got good stuff. Make them hit it. We've got a defense behind us. Just throw. Don't baby it. Just go with it.' "
But if you ask Wieters about the pitchers' hot start, he'll do his best to defer credit, politely brushing off compliments in his calm voice, which has just a hint of a South Carolinian drawl.
"You can get a lot of credit when your pitchers are hitting all [their] spots and being able to throw all their pitches," Wieters said. "They've been great. The pitching staff has really had all their stuff and been able to locate very well, which can make the catcher look smarter than he actually is."
Unfair expectations
Wieters' hitting, however, is still a work in progress. In eight games, he's batting .192 and slugging .231 — hardly Mauer-esque. Mauer — the player Wieters was frequently compared to before he was promoted — looks like an artist with a bat in his hands, and each time he comes to the plate, he might as well be applying brush strokes to the Sistine Chapel. By comparison, Wieters is still figuring out how to grasp his paint brush.
His .695 OPS in 2010 placed him fifth among American League catchers with at least 400 at-bats, behind players such as Mauer, Victor Martinez and Mike Napoli and ahead of the likes of A.J. Pierzynski, Kurt Suzuki and Jason Kendall.
"I think people's expectations were a little bit high on him," one major league scout said of Wieters. "I think he's been outstanding, but people maybe look at Mauer and think [Wieters] should be like Mauer. Well, Mauer is an anomaly. How many catchers in the history of the game are going to hit .360? That's pretty special. It's unfair, I think, to make that comparison. But if you were a club looking at the Orioles, and you could take any player on the club, I don't think there is a question that you'd take Matt Wieters over any other player, even Nick Markakis. If Andy MacPhail ever put him on the market, [the Orioles] could get whatever they wanted. Twenty-five clubs would be lining up, dying to get him."
When Wieters arrived in Baltimore two seasons ago, Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts grabbed a quick moment alone with him and tried to prepare him for the kinds of expectations he was about to face. Baltimore had been starved for good baseball for 11 seasons, and Wieters was quickly billed as a savior.
"I told him the first day: 'Dude, you'll never live up to what they think you're going to do, so just go out there and have fun. It's impossible to live up to what people think you're going to do,' " Roberts said. "He handled it so well then, and he handles it so well now, that I don't think it was ever a major issue. But I'm sure deep down, it's got to be hard because that's a lot of expectations and a lot of pressure."
Wieters insists he doesn't care whether he goes 0-for-4 every night as long as he calls a good game, he plays good defense and the Orioles win. In fact, if there is one play that might have set the tone for what kind of season Baltimore is hoping to have, it came in the seventh inning of the second game of the year.
The Orioles and Rays were in a scoreless tie, but the Rays were threatening. With two outs and two runners on base, Tampa Bay's Kelly Shoppach singled to left field and B.J. Upton cruised around third, looking to score. Felix Pie gunned a perfect throw to Wieters, who squared up, blocked the plate and lowered his shoulder. He was practically seeking contact. Upton went sprawling, arms and legs flailing, but Wieters barely budged. His expression never changed as he scooped up his mask and walked to the dugout.
The message that both catcher and team seemed to be sending was obvious.
Go ahead and take your best shot at us, the look said. We might not be perfect, but we're not pushovers, either.
kevin.vanvalkenburg@baltsun.com
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