Dave Cokin’s Hardcore Baseball: The genuine article?

It’s official. The one and only Matt Wieters will be making his big league debut on Friday night when the Orioles play host to the Tigers.

Wieters has been garnering all kinds of attention ever since being drafted fifth overall in 2007. If he lives up to the hype, which he has an excellent chance of doing, the conversation down the road will be about how the four teams drafting ahead of the Orioles in ‘07 managed to misfire so badly.

Just in case you’ve forgotten, David Price was the top pick in that draft, and he’s going to be a terrific big league pitcher. So you won’t hear me knocking the Rays for grabbing Price first overall, and he was clearly the guy almost everyone had rated as tops in that class at the time.

The second and third picks were not reaches either, as the Royals tabbed Mike Moustakas while the Cubs chose Josh Vitters. Both 3B have loads of upside, but neither is close right now. Moustakas is having a solid campaign with Hi-A Wilmington while Vitters is tearing apart Low-A with Peoria.

I would imagine both prospects will be promoted to their next respective levels before much longer. While Moustakas and Vitters have fallen well behind Wieters on the prospect hot list, they both remain potential stars.

The team that has already caught the big heat for passing on Wieters is the Pittsburgh Pirates, and deservedly so. Dave Littlefield completely misread the money Wieters would turn out to be willing to sign for, and in true Pirate tradition, Littlefield went for Clemson lefty pitcher Daniel Moskos.

Considering the level of talent in the ‘07 draft, this has a chance to be one of the worst picks ever. Moskos keeps getting promoted and is now at AA Altoona, but he’s done nothing to warrant getting moved up to tougher classifications.

In fact, his numbers at the lower levels strongly indicate he needed to repeat those classes before moving forward. But apparently the Bucs would rather pretend he’s paying off on their investment instead of looking at things realistically. That’s really not so surprising. After all, it’s the Pirates.

As for Wieters, the rep just keeps growing. He was an All-American at Georgia Tech, and was a tremendous two-way player with the Yellow Jackets, before giving up pitching to focus solely on catching.

Since emerging from school, he’s dominated everywhere he’s been. Wieters won top prospect honors in the 2007 Hawaii Winter League. Last season, in his maiden voyage as a pro, the switch-hitting Wieters hit .355 at two levels, banged out 27 home runs, walked more than he struck out and he threw out about 40 percent of those who tried to steal on him.

Wieters was a runaway as the top prospect in both the Carolina and Eastern Leagues, and won honors as Minor League Player of the Year. Not a bad first pro season, huh?

There was speculation that Wieters would be called up last September and more talk that he would win the O’s starting catcher job this spring. But the organization wisely decided to exercise a little patience and they’ve allowed Wieters to progress through each level and hone his skills without any undue pressure.

They even managed to see how Wieters might handle himself when the inevitable slump took place, as it did earlier this season at Norfolk. He didn’t sulk at all, or let it affect other aspects of his game, and Wieters emerged from the brief skid pounding the ball.

His overall numbers at Norfolk are rock solid, and the Orioles have decided that now is the time to make the move and get him some action in The Show.

So, this Friday night, Wieters will take his first big league cuts. Interestingly, he will probably be matched up against another intriguing personality, as resurgent Dontrelle Willis should be on the hill for the Tigers before what will undoubtedly be a packed house in Baltimore.

As for fantasy impact, I’m assuming Wieters is already owned in virtually every quality league. So let’s hope there aren’t any so-called experts advising readers to run right out and use that waiver priority on Wieters, as that would absolutely qualify as useless information.

What should we expect from Wieters this season? I’d say he’s got a decent shot to hit .280 and deliver 15 HR. His advanced strike zone recognition will really help him avoid getting overmatched early and Wieters will also benefit from being surrounded by some pretty good hitters in that Oriole lineup.

I would think he’ll settle into the No. 5 hole for most of this season, which should get him lots of RBI opportunities.

As for the future, the sky’s the limit. It’s easy to overhype prospects, but in the case of Matt Wieters, he looks like the genuine article.