Sports

Wieters a great catch(er)

In print | February 19, 2009

Which catcher would you want behind the plate for your favorite Major League team in 2009? Many smart baseball fans would probably pick Minnesota’s sweet-swinging Joe Mauer, the rare batting champion backstop. Other good choices include Atlanta’s power-hitting Brian McCann and Chicago’s Rookie of the Year Geovany Soto.

If you asked PECOTA, Baseball Prospectus’ player projection system, which year-in and year-out has proven itself the most accurate predictor of player performance in the business, you would get a very surprising answer:
Matt Wieters.

If you’re a casual baseball fan, you’ve never heard of him. If you’re a devoted fan, there’s still a pretty good chance you’ve never heard of him. That’s because Wieters, a catcher in the Baltimore Orioles’ organization, has never played a Major League game.

Wieters, 22, was drafted out of Georgia Tech with the fifth overall pick in 2007. He is a rare switch-hitting catcher with power to all fields and great defensive ratings. In 2008, he ripped apart A and AA pitching, earning Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year award.

He has never been called up to the Major League, and yet very reputable sources (not just statheads at Baseball Prospectus, but traditional scouts as well) are saying that he could very well dominate Major League pitching in 2009. Specifically, BP projects him to be the most valuable offensive catcher by far, and the seventh most valuable hitter in the game overall.

Recently, there’s definitely been an increased effort to find “the next big thing.” This year, it’s Wieters. Last year it was Jay Bruce of the Reds. As a 21 year-old, Bruce validated the buzz surrounding him by lighting up the National League in his first week after being called up. Though his season-long performance was not great on an absolute level, it was very impressive for a 21 year-old, and he proved himself to be worth watching for the coming years. But the buzz has moved on from him already.

And that title had been laid on many different players in the preceding few years: Delmon Young, Justin Upton and Hanley Ramirez were three highly awaited MLB arrivals in just the last few years. In 2003, a 19 year-old Jose Reyes made his MLB debut amid claims that he could be the most dynamic shortstop ever, despite being just a teenager.

The increased publicizing of top prospects’ path to the majors is an interesting trend to consider. The average MLB payroll in 2008 was about 50 percent larger than in 2000. With the exception of this offseason, which has unfolded amidst economic calamity, the free agent market has jumped up and up each offseason, with megadeals in 2004 looking modest by 2006. As the price of free agents has risen, teams have been forced to look for players whose services are not up for bidding on the open market — young prospects, who have not acquired the service time to be eligible for free agency. Matt Wieters will be paid a small fraction of the $10.5 million Mauer will make (even Mauer hasn’t ever been a free agent, though he has signed a new contract since his call-up) and could very well outperform him. This is the best and most cost-effective way to compete: get the stars before they’re stars, and before they’re paid as such.

The turning point in the league’s understanding of the evolving role of young players probably came in 2004. It was July, and MLB’s trade deadline was fast approaching. This is the time of year where contending teams trade young prospects to lesser teams for players who can help them in the current season. The idea is that if you are currently competing for a pennant, you will be willing to forfeit production in future seasons for some help in this one. However, in 2004, the Mets clearly went overboard. They traded Scott Kazmir, one of the most touted pitching prospects at the time, to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for Victor Zambrano (Victor, not Carlos). Victor Zambrano was never much more than a marginal Major League talent, and the trade did little to help the Mets in their unsuccessful run at the playoffs in 2004. Meanwhile, you may have noticed Kazmir starting Game 1 of the World Series for Tampa in 2008.

The absurdity of that swap (half of a season of a mediocre player for the first chunk of the career of a very promising one) highlighted the importance of considering age and contract status for many in the game.

It is thus very reasonable for us to observe this heightened adulation of top prospects from teams, scouts and the media. The changing economic environment in baseball caused by the escalating free agent price tags has forced teams, less wealthy ones in particular, to substitute young, low-cost talent for older, high-cost talent. The coverage and analysis of that talent is no longer fueled by an academic interest in knowing who the stars of tomorrow will be, but rather by an urgent need to find affordable production for today.

Having a young, talented player was never a bad thing. But the explosion in free agent prices we’ve seen over the past decade has made it all the more critical to get more production from cheaper, and thus younger, players. And it looks like the Orioles have hit the jackpot in 2009.