List Of Oakland Athletics Opening Day Starting Pitchers
The Oakland Athletics are a Major League Baseball (MLB) team based in Oakland, California. They play in the American League West division. The club was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1901, moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1955 and relocated to Oakland in 1968. The first game of the new baseball season for a team is played on Opening Day, and being named the Opening Day starter is an honor, which is given to the player who is expected to lead the pitching staff that season.
Since their arrival in Oakland, the A's home field has been the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, a multi-purpose stadium that has also been used for football, and soccer games. Commonly referred to as The Oakland Coliseum, or simply The Coliseum, it was formally known as Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum (1966–1998, Present), Network Associates Coliseum (1998–2004) and McAfee Coliseum (2004–2008). The A's played their 1996 Opening Day game at Cashman Field in Las Vegas, Nevada while repairs at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum were being completed, the first time in 39 years that a major league team played in a minor-league ballpark.
In Oakland, the A's have used 26 different Opening Day starting pitchers in their 44 seasons. The 26 starters have a combined Opening Day record of 14 wins, 16 losses and 14 no decisions. No decisions are only awarded to the starting pitcher if the game is won or lost after the starting pitcher has left the game or if the starting pitcher pitches fewer than five innings. Of the 14 no decisions, the A's went on to win six and lose eight of those games, for a team record on Opening Day of 20 wins and 24 losses.
Since it moved to Oakland, the team has played 25 of their Opening Day games at home: 23 at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and one each in Las Vegas and Tokyo. Of the 24 games played in Oakland, the A's starting pitchers have a record of 8 wins, 7 losses and 10 no decisions (the team won six and lost four of these no decisions). The 1996 game at Cashman Field was a loss for starter Carlos Reyes and the 2008 game in the Tokyo Dome was a no decision for starter Joe Blanton that ended in an A's loss. Overall, the team's starting pitchers' record in home games is 8–8 (with ten no decisions).
The A's have advanced to the playoffs 15 times while in Oakland, winning the American League Championship Series six times and going on to win the World Series in 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1989. In the 15 seasons that the A's advanced to the playoffs, the teams Opening Day starting pitchers have had a record of eight wins, three losses and two no decisions; the team ultimately won three and lost one of the no decisions. The team's starters won four and lost one Opening Day game in the six seasons they advanced to the World Series.
Catfish Hunter was the team's first Opening Day starter after the team moved to Oakland, taking a 3–1 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at Memorial Stadium in 1968.
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