No, Paul Skenes and Matthew Boyd can't pin Opening Day duds on a 'WBC curse'

The Pittsburgh Pirates' Paul Skenes, the San Francisco Giants' Logan Webb and the Chicago Cubs' Matthew Boyd were three of the better pitchers in the National League last season, and yet all three laid an egg on Opening Day, giving up a whopping 17 earned runs on 19 hits in a combined 9.1 innings of work. But that's not all the trio has in common: They were also teammates on Team USA at this year's World Baseball Classic — and that has at least some fans putting on their tin-foil hats and wondering whether one thing is related to the other.

There have been concerns about how the WBC affects pitchers in particular since the tournament's inception some 20 years ago. And it makes sense on its face: It forces pitchers to throw high-stress, high-leverage innings earlier in the year than they usually would, thus throwing off their spring routines and setting them up for injury and/or ineffectiveness once the season begins.

But unfortunately for the more conspiracy-minded among us, I'm afraid there's nothing to see here. Sure, the WBC is a significant departure from throwing three innings in the Grapefruit League. No, it had nothing to do with Skenes or Webb or Boyd getting knocked around on Opening Day — as anyone who actually watched their starts would be able to tell you.

Paul Skenes, Logan Webb and Matthew Boyd didn't struggle because of the WBC

We'll take Skenes first, since his dud drew the most attention. And for good reason: How does the same guy who won NL Cy Young honors last season with a sub-2.00 ERA fail to make it through even one inning?

For starters, he was going up against a New York Mets team that figures to have one of the better offenses in all of baseball this season. And as if that weren't enough, he was also the victim of some truly rotten luck — first from an infield single by Jorge Polanco that left the bat at 44 mph, and then by his own center fielder, Oneil Cruz, who misplayed not one but two routine fly balls into extra-base hits.

Flip those three plays from hits to outs, and Skenes gets out of the first without much trouble. His stuff looked about as good as it always has; sometimes, the baseball gods just decide to have some fun, especially when your GM decides to put one of the sport's worst defenses behind you.

The same can be said for Webb: Yes, he got knocked around a bit by the New York Yankees in a 7-0 loss on Wednesday night, but 1) the Yankees' league-best offense will do that to you and 2) he also suffered from some ground balls that simply found holes rather than gloves. Again, there's no indication that he was throwing the ball any differently than he would have otherwise; he struck out seven in five innings of work, including Aaron Judge not once but three different times.

Which brings us to Boyd. The lefty doesn't have a tough opponent to fall back on; he was lit up by the bottom-feeding Washington Nationals, a team that spent all winter trying to get rid of its best big-league players and might well lose 110 games this season. But is it actually all that surprising that Boyd struggled? This is the same guy who posted a 4.63 ERA for the Cubs in the second half last season, and who threw more innings in 2025 than he had in any single season since 2019. Maybe it was the WBC that threw him off; or, maybe, a pitcher who's had trouble staying healthy and effective on the mound in his career simply had a bad day.

You can believe whichever you want. Lord knows that MLB teams don't need any help building a case against their players taking part in the WBC every few years. But barring concrete evidence to the contrary, there's no reason to think that pitching in the World Baseball Classic is actually all that different from spring training.

The World Baseball Classic isn't an excuse for Team USA stars this season

In fact, the rules of the competition are built to ensure as much. The WBC is strict about how its pitchers can and cannot be used, both in terms of days of rest and in terms of pitch count: no more than 65 pitches in pool games, 80 in the quarterfinals and 95 in the semis and the championship game.

All of which more or less lines up with what these pitchers would be doing in camp in mid- to late March anyway. Granted, it's different doing it in a packed stadium with adrenaline flowing against a star-studded international lineup. But the 71 pitches Skenes threw in Team USA's semifinal win against the Dominican Republic certainly isn't far removed from his typical workload at that point in the spring. Webb averaged just over 60 pitches across his two WBC starts, while Boyd only appeared once, throwing 56 pitches across 2.1 ugly innings in the pool game against Mexico.

Is that really enough to throw a pitcher off so dramatically, especially when all three had time to make at least one more start between the Classic and Opening Day? I'm skeptical. There are far simpler explanations for what happened on Thursday, starting with the fact that baseball can be a very strange game sometimes.