Ok, it's not like I needed Baseball America to confirm that for me....but they did anyways.
Player of the Year. That's a pretty high honor, considering I would guess most people thought David Price would walk away with the award. Price, the stud left-hander in the Tampa organization, will still probably be the #1 prospect for BA before next season starts, but my bet is Wieters will be a close number 2.
As much as I couldn't wait to see Nick Markakis come up before the '06 season, I'm even more excited about Wieters. Not just because he destroyed pitching at both High-A and AA, but also because he throws out a very high percentage of runners and by all accounts calls a great ballgame behind the plate.
Wieters is the first Oriole to ever win the award, and since this award only goese back to 1981 I guess that's not a huge surprise. Ben McDonald was a very highly rated prospect in the early 90's, and Markakis was rated pretty high recently, but neither put together a season like the one Wieters did this year.
I have high hopes that after he gets a year under his belt, that Matt Wieters will be one of the two or three best catchers in the Major Leagues. When you add him to Jones and Markakis, you have three young players that could be superstars in this league. And that's not something you can say about just any team.
Keywords: Baltimore Orioles
