Birthday boy Wieters plays hero with 9th-inning blast

Some birthdays are more forgettable than others. Matt Wieters won't ever forget the day he turned 30, though.

On Saturday, the longtime Baltimore Orioles catcher bid adieu to his twenties in dramatic fashion in Anaheim, launching a go-ahead, three-run shot off closer Joe Smith with two outs in the ninth inning to lift his club to a 3-1 win over the Los Angeles Angels.

"I think I will remember this one," Wieters told MLB.com's Austin Laymance. "It's good to get a win tonight. It's a tough win, but a good win."

He ain't a kid no more, but Wieters has certainly been swinging like a young man this season after logging just 75 games in an injury-marred 2015 campaign. Through 28 games - all but two of which he's spent behind the plate - the three-time All-Star is hitting .283/.330/.455 (112 OPS+) with four homers and five doubles, with minor improvements in exit velocity and batted-ball distance, too.

In his ninth-inning plate appearance against Smith, a side-arming right-hander with significant platoon splits, Wieters said he was looking to elevate a ball to left field. He ended up with his first opposite-field homer of 2016.

"Certain guys you are trying to hit the ball the other way and get a ball up," said Wieters, who now has five career go-ahead homers in the ninth inning or later. "I think he was trying to come in a little bit and one leaked out over the middle and was just able to put the barrel on it."

Thanks to Wieters' late-game heroics, the Orioles now rank first in all of baseball with 62 homers in 2016, and trail only the Boston Red Sox (.843) for the American League lead in OPS (.781).

(Video courtesy: MLB.com)