Orange County Register

ANAHEIM

Give Brandon Wood credit for this — he is an open-minded young player.

A shortstop pretty much his entire baseball life, Wood had already added third base to his resume when Triple-A Salt Lake manager Bobby  Mitchell came to him earlier this season with another idea.

“We were in Albuquerque and Mitch came up to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to start working you out at first base,’” Wood said. “I got kind of excited for the simple fact that it was opening up another window for me to reach my goal of getting to the big leagues and staying here.”

There were adjustments at first. Wood had to get accustomed to playing with “a lot of leather” — the first baseman’s glove being much larger than a middle infieler’s model.

“One thing I didn’t realize was there’s a lot of work over there,” Wood said. “You’re always doing something. You’re not quarterbacking the infield like at shortstop but you’re part of all the plays.”

Wood made a handful of starts at first in Salt Lake and said he thinks that was enough to get him over the initial bumps of learning a new position.

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “I feel comfortable over there. After the first few games I played there, I was kind of checking things off my list that hadn’t happened yet. I was like, ‘I can do that. I can do that. I can do that.’”

With the Angels facing another left-hander today (CC Sabathia), Wood is in the lineup at first base, his first major-league start at the position. Regular first baseman Kendry Morales has been much more productive batting left-handed (.303, .592 slugging, 15 home runs, 44 RBI) than right-handed (.213, .279 slugging, no home runs, five RBI) and Angels manager Mike Scioscia has limited his at-bats from the right side.

“Woody handled himself very well around the bag and I think against left-handed pitching he’s a guy who hopefully will give us some production,” Scioscia said. “He had a good game against Sabathia in New York, had some good at-bats against him.”

Wood was 2 for 4 in that early May game with two singles and a walk off Sabathia.

Today’s lineups:

ANGELS

3B Chone Figgins

SS Maicer Izturis

RF Bobby Abreu

DH Mike Napoli

CF Gary Matthews Jr.

2B Howie Kendrick

1B Brandon Wood

LF Robb Quinlan

C  Jeff Mathis

RHP John Lackey

YANKEES

CF Brett Gardner

SS Derek Jeter

1B Mark Teixeira

3B Alex Rodriguez

DH Hideki Matsui

2B Robinson Cano

RF Eric Hinske

LF Melky Cabrera

C   Jose Molina

LHP CC Sabathia

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