Remembering Wieters' signing day
Now that Matt Wieters is finally in an Orioles' uniform, Andy MacPhail can look back and laugh about it now.
But he also can remember well, how late in the evening of August 15, 2007 it looked like Wieters would never be an Oriole. They had until midnight to sign Wieters, their first-round pick in that June's draft.
"If you had asked me at 11 o'clock, an hour before, I would have bet you it wouldn't have happened. We were considerably far apart," MacPhail said. "We narrowed the gap considerably in the last half hour, we upped our offer and they reduced their offer. They were stuck on Teixeira money and we were a tick above Mauer."
At 11 o'clock the sides were several million dollars apart.
Six minutes before the deadline, it's believed that agent Scott Boras dropped his demand by millions and Wieters' signing became official. He was awarded a six million dollar bonus, one of the largest ever given a player in the first-year draft.
Now how about that Tuesday night announcement on MASN that Wieters was being called by the Orioles?
"A variety of media types wanted to know when he was coming up. Whoever got the story, we were going to annoy a lot of people that didn't get the story first. So at the end, we thought the best way to handle it would be give it to our rightsholder. Plus we let our fans in on it first.
"We gave the fans enough time to know when his debut would be. Let him debut here at home. But then after three games he gets out of dodge and becomes just another player as the team goes on the road. Plus he went from hitting .260 to .360 in May and it was time."
Was there a marketing aspect to the timing of Wieters' callup?
"That aspect is part of it, but that's to appease your fans. If he had opened on the road or the fans hadn't been given advance notice they would have been annoyed at us and rightfully so."
SHAMELESS PLUG - Check back on my blog the rest of this week for more from an interview with Andy MacPhail as he discusses the farm system, the first-year draft and a lot more.
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Categories (click for archive)Orioles News | Steve Melewski |
Thanks, Steve. Sounds like Andy wasn't going to tell too much about the last minutes of the negotiation, since he may not want to embarrass Boras, who so rarely doesn't get everything he wants. I'll look forward to hearing the rest of the interview. I'd be particularly interested in what Mr. MacPhail might have to say about the O's spring training facility, which continues to be well below major league standards. Does he have any part in what seems like the only part of the organization that's still a fiasco?
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They have already made some improvements there since they are playing extended spring training games at that facility now and have been for weeks.
Not to disappoint, but of the many topics we discussed, that was not one of them.
Steve
Steve,
Is Luke still taking infield/grounders at 1B on a regular basis? Any sense as to how Trembley/Andy views his abilities there defensively versus Huff or an average 1B? IF Huff gets traded I'm not sure we can take Wiggy and his first pitch pop up tendancies getting the majority of the ABs for the rest of the year.
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Don't know about Luke at first, we need to check on that. Oscar Salazar could certainly play first if the O's had a need there, which they don't now. - Steve
steve if weiters,riemold,adam jones,matusz,tillman,rich hill,berken and erbe are as good as potential along with sherrill and luke scott,albers and patton in trades andy mcfail will beconsidered a genius ps--the signing of koji,isturis ,zaun and hendrickson.minus---pie,eaton and freel.
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MacPhail deserves a lot of credit. But looking at the successes of guys like Berken, Bergesen, Hernandez and Reimold tells you the O's farm system coaches and managers are doing something right. These guys didn't get good overnight or magically get better when Andy took over. - Steve
Looking forward to the updates, Steve and thanks!
Steve- Do you have any idea if the Orioles have any scouts down in the Dominican Republic for Miguel Angel Sanos? He is a shortstop and we could use one for the future.
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Surely, they have scouts there. Don't know about him in particular though.
Steve