The Orioles playoff chances continue to dwindle faster than my interest in The Newsroom after a disappointing three games in Tropicana Field. It’s looking more and more like the 2013 season will be the team’s second best since 1997.
However, in the strangest of places, one positive note about our beloved Orioles caught my eye this morning. In his Monday column on TheMMQB.com, NFL writer Peter King praised Orioles catcher Matt Wieters for his superhuman abilities behind the plate.
Also hard to not have admiration for Baltimore catcher Matt Wieters (who has sat 20 games all season) after his four-day stretch in Boston and St. Petersburg last week. Wieters caught four days in a row (big deal) and four full games—two nine-winning games, as well as 12-, and 18-inning games. He never came out. All on the road, all with wild-card-race pressure, and the 18-innning job after the Orioles arrived at their St. Petersburg hotel after 3 a.m. Friday from Boston. The totals:
Innings caught: 47.
Hours between first pitch of Game 1 and last pitch of Game 4: 79.
Batters faced: 190.
Pitches called: 748.
Different pitchers: 14.
Passed balls: 0.
Errors: 0.
Wieters has been beat up by the Twitter bullies all season long for his disappointing numbers at the plate. As of Monday morning he’s hitting .230/.283/.410 in 559 plate appearances this season.
I wrote about Wieters on September 10 in my weekly guest column on MASNSports.com and concluded that if Buck Showalter wanted to see better numbers from the O’s catcher at the plate, he would limit his innings behind it. It’s my belief that Showalter values Wieters’ defense so much that he’s willing to sacrifice a few points off his batting average.
September has been a huge disappointment. This thing was right there for them. Like last October, the bats betrayed the Birds this September. Pitching has been pretty dang good (despite not having an Ace), but the bats went silent. Wieters has been one fo the few September bright spots with the stick.
You could also say the other teams pitching was better than the O’s , the other teams quality pitchers beat the O’s quality hitting , it usually does .
Wieters is a decent catcher and I’m sure the Yankees have their eyes on him . Good pitching beats good hitting most of the time so we all knew how far the O’s would go this year . While it’s fun to go on the ride it never stops where you want it to . Let’s face it guys , until someone convinces Angelos to pay top dollar for quality pitchers these rides will only go so far . It’s easy to say the bats went silent but there is a reason for this to happen , it’s the other teams pitchers , they beat good hitting , get it ?