Josh Hamilton capped his four-home run night by taking an 83-mph cookie from Darren O'Day over the center-field fence. Before joining the Baltimore Orioles this year, O'Day was Hamilton's teammate with Texas, and he thought he knew Hamilton's tendencies well enough to shake off the slider Matt Wieters wanted him to throw.





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What O'Day realized 425 feet later – what every Baltimore Orioles pitcher learns eventually – is that no matter how well he thinks he knows what to throw, he doesn't know better than Wieters.

"Every time I shake him off, I give up a hit," O'Day said. "It's the truth. The home run I threw to Josh, I shook him off. The pitch to get a runner on base before Hamilton, shook him off. Game before, double to [Dustin] Pedroia, shook him off.

"I told him next time I shake him off, just give me the middle finger."

As much as Wieters' offensive explosion early this season has helped the Orioles' surprising ascent to the top of the American League East, his encyclopedic knowledge of hitters and their tendencies has cemented his place as perhaps the best catcher in baseball. All of the pre-debut hype that ensconced Wieters, who turns 26 on Monday, finally is being realized, and it's not just because he's a switch-hitting, home run-raking dynamo who is making the "Mauer with power" sobriquet look very real.

College teammates had a nickname for Wieters: God. It wasn't just that he could do anything; his effect on a game was omnipresent. And while the major leagues make idols into men daily, the growth of Wieters over his four major-league seasons has at the very least turned him into a baseball Apollo, for what he does is as much art as science.

Learning the tendencies of major-league hitters is as arduous and unforgiving a task as there is in the game – and one that's normally incumbent upon the pitcher. So to have a catcher who spends so much of his free time learning about those whom he crouches behind is a blessing for pitchers, and particularly one for an Orioles staff that has struggled to develop any semblance of the quality eminently necessary in the cutthroat East.

Wieters has helped coax a 3.41 ERA out of a patchwork Orioles staff. When everyone else on the team plane is passing around a bottle of Compass Box Asyla scotch to taste, Wieters defers and buries himself with his iPad to ready for the next series. He understands: The Orioles are going nowhere soon without Wieters and his faculty for knowing exactly what to throw and when to throw it.

"The No. 1 job for the catcher is to get his pitching staff ready," Wieters said. "That's how you're going to win the most games. You want the offensive numbers to be there, but at the same time, the catcher can win more games with his pitch calling and defense."

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What Wieters does goes relatively unnoticed because of the paucity of statistics that can quantify his game-calling and receiving talents. Scouts, players and personnel throughout baseball, however, agree that he owns a preternatural talent for excelling at the position's intricacies – from the signs he throws to the runners he throws out – that puts him in the echelon of the game's best.

"Everywhere I've been there have been great catchers, and when you compare, they're not as good as Wieters," Orioles shortstop J.J. Hardy said. "He can throw anyone out, blocks everything, and I think he calls a better game than anyone I've been around. He always throws down the right fingers."

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