Pick 2 – Oakland Athletics
Selection: SP Matt Morris
By Graham Wexler
The Oakland Athletics aren’t strangers to crossroads, but this year’s draft offers something far more enticing: clarity. Sitting at Pick No. 2, Oakland finds itself in an enviable position—close enough to the top to secure elite talent, but without the burden of choosing between multiple franchise-altering paths. The Yankees will take Carpenter at No. 1. Everyone knows it. Which means the A’s can simply take the best player left on the board and walk away thrilled.
And thrilled they should be.
This is the same front office that brought in John Olerud last season, a quietly brilliant move to stabilize a lineup that has spent too many years trying to rediscover its identity. Rickey Henderson, even in the late stages of his career and with his rate stats drifting downward, still mustered nearly four wins above replacement—because of course he did. But beyond those two pillars, the offense sputtered. Rebuilding teams often find themselves starting players who wouldn’t sniff a playoff roster, and Oakland knows that pain intimately.
The pitching staff wasn’t much different: flashes of promise from Ramon Garcia and Todd Stottlemyre, but nothing resembling a true anchor. Nothing resembling inevitability.
Enter Matt Morris.
If Carpenter is the draft’s high-upside catalyst, Morris is its sure thing. He may be a half-step behind Carpenter in terms of pure projection, but Morris is, in many ways, more ready. The body is nearly there. The stamina? Exceptional—borderline elite for a prospect. The arsenal is already built to handle major-league lineups, and the adjustments he’ll need are tweaks, not overhauls. There’s comfort in that, and the A’s—deep into a multi-year rebuild—should embrace that comfort.
Morris doesn’t just fill a need; he defines the next phase of Oakland’s plan. He’s the type of arm who can lead a staff, set a culture, and absorb innings while the rest of the roster continues its slow, methodical climb back to relevance.
Oakland has many holes. They know that. Everyone knows that. But you don’t fix everything at once—you fix the things that give you direction. Morris does exactly that.
A textbook pick. A foundational piece. And another step forward in a rebuild that’s starting to take real, recognizable shape.