That’s getting into the area of “Have we delayed his service clock and does he have anything left to prove” territory. There’s a distinct possibility he could be in Baltimore the day after we delay his service clock. Or, maybe they just park him in Norfolk for half the year. Depends on what Matt does in AAA and if he forcs the matter. If he hits the way he does last year, I might wait and plan to buy a walk-up ticket – he may not be there.

Barring injuries to our top 2 catchers.

The O’s now remind me a little of my older brothers talking about the O’s of the mid-70’s. I was a kid, but old enough to remember the talk about Dauer, Murray, Boddicker, Flanagan, etc. coming up from the minors. We know where these guys help take the team. It’s a long shot to see it again, but it’s fun to anticipate Wieters, Matusz, Arrieta, Tillman, etc. joining the likes of homegrown Markakis (and Roberts) for the nucleus of a decent team. I can wait for Wieters to spend an extra month or so in the minors and enjoy the current feeling of anticipation of better things. At least this time it seems like there is a chance.

Matt will be up with the Major League team by mid season, if not before. So far, everything I’ve seen and heard about this kid, speaks for itself. He’s apparently of high quality character, which was on full display during a recent interview. Even though the interviewer was trying to pump him up, the kid just down played it all and just talked about how he just wanted to continue to get better every day and when the time came to move North, he’d crossed the bridge then. I came away with tremendous respect for the young man. Because we all know when your being labled as the next big thing on your franchise, it can be so easy to get swept up in it, but so far, the young man seems to have a pretty even keel about it all.

Does anyone know what the actual date is that would delay his service time for a year? Here’s what I think I’ve figured out:

According to the collective bargaining agreement (this is all from Googling around, so I can’t vouch for the absolute accuracy of this) anything under 172 days doesn’t count as a year. The Orioles’ season begins April 6 and ends Oct. 4, which (I think) is a total of 182 days. So he only needs to miss 11 days to have this year not count — so he could be up April 17.

The other issue, though, is arbitration — a percentage of players with only two years of official service time (17% according to one article I read) are granted arbitration eligibility (Super 2 status) along with the three-year players, and the number of games that is the cutoff shifts a little depending on where that 17% cutoff actually is in terms of how much service time the actual two-year players have — usually it means two years plus something around 130 games. This would not effect the length of time the Orioles control Wieters, but it would definitely effect how much they pay him over that six years and the total amount of any long-term contract they might try to negotiate (since it would cost more to buy out that extra year of arbitration). If the Orioles wanted to do that, they’d have to delay his debut until some time around late May/early June (starting June 1 would put him at 126 days, I think).

Why, yes, I am procrastinating. How could you tell?

Tuesday, April 21st vs. the White Sox. The Matt Wieters debut.