Drayer: The gloves are off for Mariners’ Bryan Woo

That Bryan Woo was perfect through six innings Wednesday night for the Seattle Mariners against a good San Diego Padres team was little surprise. Woo has put zero after zero up on the board this season and carried the lowest walk percentage for starters (90 innings pitched minimum) into the game.

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

To be clear, perfect games are rare and there is a universe of distance between six perfect frames and nine. But still, Woo gives you the feeling that, at a minimum, perhaps a no-hitter is on the table when he is going good.

Last year we marveled at Woo being able to break into the big leagues and survive despite only having thrown slightly over 200 innings total before his debut, having converted to pitcher late in college. Despite understanding the value of his fastball, both of the four-seam and two-seam variety, Woo and his path continue to surprise.

He is so young in his game. He reported to spring training not coming off an offseason spent at a college or high-performance center with all the latest technology available to him (like Bryce Miller or Logan Gilbert), or a fully-equipped home gym with multiple trainers (like Luis Castillo). He didn’t have the well established routine of George Kirby that came with years of knowing exactly what he needed to stay finely tuned. For Woo, the big offseason advantage was getting to spend a month in Hawaii where there were high school fields to throw on with a friend of a friend who pitched in college.

Back home in the Bay Area, getting work in was more challenging.

“Usually, I am trying to find a new guy every day or work around their schedules,” Woo said last spring. “It’s a little colder at home. You are finding a gym, a field, wherever you can get your work in. It’s not as glamorous but you gotta do what you gotta do.”

Bryan Woo on the right path

What he didn’t do, and what was somewhat curious at the time, was make major changes or add a pitch like Miller did. Lefties hit .283 against Woo in 2023 with a .928 OPS, but when asked throughout the offseason what changes would be made, coaches and club officials said nothing. The belief in what they saw was there, and the feeling was Woo’s best path to improvement was simply to pitch more. It appears they were right.

Leave him (mostly) alone. Coming in, Woo didn’t have the advantage of having worked in pitching labs or with elite coaching, but he had an understanding of how his body worked, and with that he set the foundation.

“Coming into pitching, the only thing I really knew was you want to make the ball come out on its own,” he said earlier this season on the Mariners radio pregame show. “Use your whole body, use your legs, use your core. Your arm shouldn’t be the thing that is creating all the momentum. So I think if you use that correctly and you are doing everything else correctly, it kind of comes out like it is smooth and it’s easy. There’s always good intent behind it and there is intensity, but I think if you are moving well and using your whole body, that’s kind of how it should feel.”

Stand behind home plate when he throws and you see it all come together. The fastball out of hand looks very different crossing the plate. In his second at-bat Wednesday night, Padres All-Star Fernando Tatis Jr. saw it – three times climbing the ladder, and Tatis was fooled by each pitch, all in the zone.

Fernando Tatis Jr. on Bryan Woo:

“His ball was rising on a level I haven’t seen much. The guy has really good stuff. He was pounding the zone. His fastball was really alive and he was making good pitches all the way from the beginning.”

— Daniel Kramer (@DKramer_) September 12, 2024

It was a special outing but one that should not be far from typical for Woo, who last week in Oakland – minutes from where he grew up in Alameda, Calif. – took a look back at what was learned.

“I’ve grown a lot,” Woo said before he made his 18th start of the season, matching his total last year. “Obviously physically and what I have been able to grow stuff-wise, learning to use different weapons. But eating innings, kind of being in that role a little bit better in terms of going deep in the ballgame and being a consistent presence in the rotation.”

The process has been pushed forward with the gloves taken off following his return from the injured list for a hamstring strain in July. The determination had been made that he was built up enough and his innings no longer needed to be watched. Since his return, Woo has pitched into the seventh inning of seven of the eight starts he has made.

“You have a year under your belt and you understand the marathon that is the season and taking care of yourself and your body,” he said. “What helps me, what doesn’t help me. It’s been a number of things, just a full maturation process.”

Gloves no longer necessary, they can be put back on the shelf for the next young starter to crack the Mariners’ rotation.

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