The Puzzling Selection Of Alex Wood For Opening Night

Alex Wood may not be an ace, but I am actually in the camp that saw his signing as a perfectly reasonable move by the A’s. Pitching depth is important, Ken Waldichuk had already become the first domino to fall, and potentially Wood provides a solid veteran mentor and leader with the versatility to start or relieve. At $8.5M, Wood was a relative bargain in today’s absurd market. It is also a plus that when I watch him pitch, I am reminded to donate to the Epilepsy Foundation.

So no “Wood-bashing” in this space even after a less than inspired debut that began with 3 wobbly but mostly effective innings followed by a 4th inning the lefty would start but not finish as 5 runs scored.

However, there’s a difference between signing a decent veteran swing man and the decision to anoint him the game 1 starting pitcher. What makes it so hard for me to understand is that while there were several good reasons not to land on Wood there were also not really any good reasons to select him.

Let’s begin with the reasons not to choose Wood. First and foremost there was an obvious selection because Paul Blackburn is the A’s longest tenured Athletic dating back to the 2017 season. Blackburn checks the boxes of loyalty to one of your own, a veteran who has earned the nod, and a recent All-Star.

Selecting Blackburn would have allowed the A’s to go “R/L/R/L/R” by way of slotting either Wood or JP Sears #2 and going from there. And if you take spring training results to mean anything, it was Blackburn who stepped up and tossed back to back dominant outings at the end of spring, dotting the corners with all his pitches and limiting his opponents to 2 hits in 11.2 IP.

Meanwhile, Wood came to Oakland with a caveat to his versatility: in 2023 with the Giants what he showed was that he could both start and relieve — but he was far more effective coming out of the bullpen than when he tried to go through lineups multiple times with his special brand of deception and moxie.

So it wasn’t exactly surprising when after skating through 3 IP with too many 3-ball counts and a couple rockets for extra base hits, Wood’s act stopped working entirely in the 4th. He could have had a better fate had, for example, Ryan Noda successfully kept the tag on Austin Hedges for an out instead of a second run, but he also wasn’t good.

Still the point isn’t really how Wood pitched it’s more that he pitched. He pitched about like his track record would predict, while 7-year A’s veteran Blackburn and “32 starts with the A’s last year” Sears watched and thought, “You know, I too would have been honored to get the Opening Day nod for the first time in my career.”

What I can’t really come up with is a single “why” Wood made the most sense, just a lot of reasons he didn’t. Not that it would have mattered last night, given how good Shane Bieber was, how mediocre the A’s lineup is, how laughable the underbelly of Oakland’s bullpen is, and how no one under consideration for the start will ever be mistaken for anybody’s ace.

But Blackburn actually deserved the “honor” and even Sears offers tenure with the club and the distinction of having “taken the ball every 5th day” for an entire A’s season. Instead the nod went to a guy who probably shouldn’t even be starting, let alone slotting in the first spot, and someone whose first pitch last night was his first pitch as an Oakland Athletic ever.

Just a little weird. And while I’m sure we’ll never hear, I can’t help but wonder how Blackburn feels about being bypassed. He’s no ace, but he certainly deserved to be on the mound last night. Wood that he had been.