Notes on Luis Matos, PECOTA, the WBC, Matt Wieters and more

Led by their manager, former Orioles outfielder Luis Matos, Puerto Rico beat Mexico 1-0 in extra innings Tuesday night to win its first Caribbean Series title since 2000.

"Being my first year as a manager in Puerto Rico and knowing that Puerto Rico has not won in 16 years brings a lot of joy," Matos told reporters. "I'm very happy and I'm very excited. We've been down in every series. We were 0-3 and we came back with three wins, and we are champions right now."

The Orioles drafted Matos out of Puerto Rico in the 10th round in 1996. He played for the club for most of seven seasons, batting .256/.313/.375.

Puerto Rico manager Luis Matos was given a standing ovation when he walked up to the gate here at Culiacan airport. https://t.co/TWjZeSnRQ5

-- Jesse Sanchez (@JesseSanchezMLB) February 8, 2017

More PECOTA: As we have written here a few times, the PECOTA projection system has done a very poor job in recent years in projecting the Orioles' win-loss record.

The projection for last year was 72 wins and the team won 89. The projection for this coming season is for 73 wins, the third-worst mark in the majors and for a last-place finish.

I've been asked many times why PECOTA always seems to miss so badly on the Orioles. Yesterday, we got an answer to that question.

Harry Pavlidis is the director of technology for Baseball Prospectus and was a guest on MLB Network. He was asked about PECOTA's poor record on the Orioles.

"I think Baltimore is a team that we typically struggle with," Pavlidis said. "They tend to put together bullpens and pitching staffs that outperform the projections. But again, it's hard for our projection systems to pick up on those trends.

"So again, we look at them as being a pretty much soft team all around without any real great strength to rely on. We find them all the way down in the cellar. And it's usually those cellar-dwellar teams that are the ones that are most likely to beat the projections, so keep that in mind, too."

Now we know.

WBC rosters: There are a total of eight players from the Orioles organization that will take part in the World Baseball Classic next month. The rosters were announced last night on MLB Network. We already knew that Adam Jones and Mychal Givens would play for Team USA, with Manny Machado playing for the Dominican Republic and Jonathan Schoop for the Netherlands.

But we found out last night that catcher Welington Castillo is also playing for the Dominican squad. This will cut into his time at O's camp in Sarasota, where he will have a chance to learn the new Orioles pitchers he will be working with this season.

Three O's minor leaguers are on WBC rosters with left-hander Alexander Wells playing for Australia, Sharlon Schoop joining his younger brother with the Netherlands and Gui Yuan Xu on the roster for China.

Xu was signed by the Orioles in July 2015 and is trying to become the first player from mainland China to make it to the major leagues. He was the first player signed from one of Major League Baseball's three youth developmental centers in China. In his first pro season in 2016, he played for the Orioles' Rookie-level Gulf Coast League team. In 33 games, he hit .247/.271/.284.

Wells, who turns 20 later this month, was signed by the Orioles in August 2015. Last season, he went 4-5 with a 2.15 ERA over 13 starts for short-season Single-A Aberdeen. He ranked third in ERA in the New York-Penn League.

The 29-year-old Sharlon Schoop was recently re-signed to a minor league contract by the Orioles. Last year between Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk, he hit .226/.297/.334.

Wieters still waiting: Catcher Matt Wieters has to get signed by some team any day at this point, doesn't he? The man that has caught 882 games for the Orioles since 2009 is still a free agent.

Agent Scott Boras said at the Winter Meetings that he felt Wieters would not sign until January. Well that has come and gone. Boras is not concerned about Wieters still being out there, he told MLB Network Radio yesterday.

"I never worry about a player who has skill and talent and he's in the prime of his career," Boras said. "You go back and look at the age of 30, you can compare him to Carlton Fisk. He has similar home runs and RBIs and games caught. And frankly, he's a better ball blocker. They both throw out in the mid-30 percentiles.

"The reality in Matt's case, he had Tommy John (surgery). Everybody wanted to make sure his arm was OK, and in the last half of the season, he threw out 40 percent of the runners.

"I think there are a lot of owners that could say to themselves, 'If I want to win, if I want to be in the playoffs and if I add one player, an All-Star player, I can add a player of that dimension to my team and he can impact so many other players. That player is still available and I'm probably not going to win without him.' "

Boras added: "There are a number of teams that have to make that judgement ... Matt Wieters is that much of a difference maker."

Scott Boras says he's talking to numerous teams about Matt Wieters, compares him to Carlton Fisk AUDIO: https://t.co/rgyXUyDGu4

-- MLB Network Radio (@MLBNetworkRadio) February 8, 2017

Would you rather?: On "The Mid-Atlantic Sports Report" on MASN yesterday, the question was asked, "Would you rather Adam Jones bats first or lower down in the order for the Orioles?"

In the 2016 season, Jones batted first for 450 at-bats and hit .282/.320/.471, which was better than his overall stats for the year at .265/.310/.436. For his career, Jones has mostly batted either second, third or fourth. He has a career OPS of .817 batting second, .743 batting third and .832 hitting fourth.

So where should Jones bat and who should leadoff for the Orioles?