Insiders break down why Mariners’ Bryan Woo is so hard to figure out

Sep 12, 2024, 2:56 PM

Seattle Mariners pitcher Bryan Woo on Sept. 11, 2024 against the San Diego Padres. (Alika Jenner/Getty Images)

(Alika Jenner/Getty Images)

Seattle Sports

The Seattle Mariners have had plenty of stellar pitching performances throughout this season, but Bryan Woo may have had the best yet in Wednesday’s 5-2 win over the San Diego Padres.

Drayer: The gloves are off for Mariners’ Bryan Woo

The second-year right-hander took a perfect game into the seventh inning – no hits, no walks, no baserunners whatsoever. It wasn’t broken up until Fernando Tatis Jr. lasered a home run into the left-field corner, which perhaps not coincidentally came right after Woo had to spend nearly 20 minutes in the dugout while the Mariners added on a pair of runs against two separate Padres pitchers in the bottom of the sixth inning.

Woo was taken out before making it through the seventh, putting a few blemishes on his final line (6 2/3 innings, two earned runs, one walk, five strikeouts) in a game where he was, for the most part, completely dominant.

Wednesday was far from the first time Woo has grabbed attention this season, which has been quite the breakout campaign for the 24-year-old former sixth-round MLB Draft pick. He currently owns a 2.38 ERA, 0.823 WHIP and 8-2 record in 19 starts (105 2/3 innings) with 82 strikeouts to just 10 walks, essentially putting himself among the game’s elite pitchers despite missing time at the beginning of the season with elbow inflammation and having a short stint on the injured list with a hamstring strain along the way.

It’s all pretty incredible considering Woo was a little-known pitcher in Seattle’s farm system just two years ago who had an unimpressive college career (his ERA in his final season with Cal-Poly in 2021 was 6.11). But the Mariners saw something in his makeup and have helped him nurture it, and that’s all a big part of why he was the story around the league on Wednesday night.

“The way Woo was cooking last night, man, that was pretty amazing,” Mariners broadcaster Aaron Goldsmith said Thursday morning to Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk. “With the exception of, like, one catch by (Randy) Arozarena, it was pretty effortless for Bryan Woo. That was awesome. It was fun to watch.”

‘A much different look’

Goldsmith dove into what he’s learned about why Woo has been so mysterious to opposing hitters.

“It is really fun to try to figure out. I don’t know if any of us have the exact answer, but I can tell you a couple of ingredients I think for Woo,” he said. “One is he just has a really unique delivery. He has among the very lowest release points in baseball, and different is good. I think we all know that. Different is very good, in fact, in baseball, and he’s an outlier in that standpoint of just how low the ball is when it gets released from his arm, from his hand. So it’s a much different look.”

It’s not just Woo’s unique armslot that makes him so hard to figure out. The ease in how he delivers a pitch, his ability to throw strikes at a high rate, and baseball’s pitch clock make for a lethal combination.

“I can’t speak to this myself, but I’ve talked to enough guys who have been in the batter’s box and they all say the same thing, and that is when your mechanics are that smooth and that easy, the ball does jump on you more,” Goldsmith continued. “When it looks like it should be coming out at 91 mph but it comes out of anywhere from 94 to 97, it pops. So you’ve got the release point, plus how smooth it is, plus the fact that – and there’s a number of guys for the Mariners who are like this – he is just kind of the ultimate on-the-prowl pitcher. He just keeps pumping strikes; he’s not a nibbler.

“So when you look at a guy who throws basically more strikes than any other starter – I mean he’s right there in the top five (in MLB), at some points this season has been No. 1 in that category – I think the pitch clock really helps a guy like that because from a hitter standpoint there is no relief. You cannot call time multiple times and step out and try to slow his rhythm down, so when he gets in a groove like that, you feel like you have to start swinging early because if you don’t, you’re behind 0-2. And so you get a lot of quick outs a lot of times for Bryan Woo. He’s really special. It’s very unique.”

Woo did add one extra thing to the combination Wednesday night, however, so maybe that’s why he was all the more unhittable against the Padres.

Must’ve been the cleats 🥷 https://t.co/OwoOidY8CA

— Bryan Woo (@BJW002) September 12, 2024

Hear the full Brock and Salk conversation with Seattle Mariners broadcaster Aaron Goldsmith in the podcast at this link or in the player near the top of this post.

Hyphen’s take on Bryan Woo

Just a few hours later Thursday on Seattle Sports, former Mariners pitcher and current MLB Network analyst Ryan Rowland-Smith talked about Woo when he joined Bump and Stacy.

Rowland-Smith shared what stood out to him from Woo’s performance on Wednesday night.

“It’s September, you’re reaching 20 starts, it’s that point where it’s like OK, the league starts to catch up to you – especially when you’re as good as he is, the numbers he’s putting up,” Rowland-Smith said. “So all of a sudden people start catching on the fact that, alright, this guy’s gonna be in the strike zone a ton. Not to mention the team he’s pitching against is literally the toughest team to strike out and to avoid contact against, especially the second, third time through the lineup.”

Rowland-Smith liked that Woo didn’t stray from his plan even as his strikeouts tapered off the more the Padres saw him.

“The most impressive thing for me was he was getting some swing and miss early on, then he didn’t, but he didn’t start getting away from the plate. You know, he didn’t start getting into these 2-1 counts cause he’s trying to avoid contact. That’s the one thing with Bryan Woo, man, he’s just so settled in the fact that, ‘You know what? I’m gonna have this upshoot fastball on the top of the strike zone and the hitters are just gonna make weak contact.’ And he just leans into that so heavily – he’s 80% fastballs last night, and you know the results just speak from themself. So really, really impressive.”

Listen to the full Bump and Stacy conversation with MLB Network analyst Ryan Rowland-Smith at this link or in the podcast below.