Mariners pitcher Bryan Woo is doing something no other starter has done in MLB history

The Seattle Mariners staggered home late last Wednesday after a four-city trip that upended their identity. A team built on dynamic starting pitching lost seven of its last eight games through Baltimore, Queens, Williamsport, Pa., and Philadelphia, with an MLB-worst 7.75 rotation ERA in that stretch.

On Friday, though, the Mariners returned home. And for a team suddenly desperate for reliable starts, Bryan Woo has been as close to automatic as any pitcher on the planet.

“I’m never trying to fool around,” Woo said before his clutch seven-inning, one-run performance in Friday’s 3-2 win over the A’s. “I’m never trying to spot corners and finesse. I’m going right after you. And I feel like if I do that consistently, then it breeds efficiency, and efficiency gets me deeper into games.”

No pitcher in a decade has been as efficient as Woo from the start of a season into late August. He has lasted at least six innings in each of his first 24 starts, becoming the first starter to do that since Zack Greinke in 2015.

Woo’s precision, though, makes him a distinct case in MLB history. According to the Mariners, he is the first pitcher ever to open a season with 25 consecutive starts of at least six innings and no more than two walks.

Last week’s bludgeoning aside, the Mariners have largely succeeded with a pitching philosophy like this: “Hitting is hard, and your stuff is good, so throw strikes.” No American League team gets more innings from its starters than Seattle, and Woo embodies the approach.

“It’s nice being out there in the bullpen knowing that the first five, six innings, you’re just able to kinda hang out,” reliever Gabe Speier said. “I mean, yeah, every once in a while there’ll be a blow-up game where guys start smacking balls, for sure. But attacking is going to work, like, 95% of the time. If you stick with that mentality throughout the whole year, I think you’re going to have a good year.”

Woo is 11-7 with a 2.94 ERA, striking out 160 and walking 30 across 159 innings. According to Sports Info Solutions, he throws fastballs (four-seamers or sinkers) 72.4% of the time, the most of any qualified pitcher in MLB.

To Woo, it’s not complicated. Whatever catcher Cal Raleigh or Mitch Garver puts down, he will throw. He might shake off a suggestion now and then, but he trusts their preparation and instincts – and trusting those around him has helped make Woo an All-Star.

Woo, 25, never saw himself as a pitcher in the first place. He wanted to be a shortstop and volunteered to pitch when his high school team needed an arm. In three seasons at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he had a 6.36 ERA, allowing 11.6 hits and four walks per nine innings. When the draft came around after his junior year, Woo was recovering from Tommy John surgery.

“I was just kind of relying on if a scout liked me or not,” Woo said. “It wasn’t really like I was gonna have any numbers to show for it.”

That scout was Trent Black, now the Mariners’ director of pitching strategy. Every year, Black immerses himself in videos of draft prospects, studying the way their bodies move. From that, he identifies pitchers who can improve and thrive under Seattle’s guidance.

Black didn’t scout Woo in person, and he didn’t need to. He saw enough in the arm action and range of motion of an injured, ineffective pitcher to push for the Mariners to take him.

“Trent’s interpretation, and I’ll translate it roughly this way, was: ‘Through the lens I’m looking through, I would take him (first overall) in the draft – I just think there’s so much potential to help him grow,’” president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said. “So we worked something out with his agent; we drafted him in the sixth round, we overpaid him to urge him to sign rather than going back to school or a transfer portal. And he trusted us.”

Woo signed for $318,200 as the 174th pick in the 2021 draft – and so far, he has easily outperformed the 15 pitchers taken in the first round. The way he throws his fastballs distinguishes Woo from the rest.

“The uphill plane – and, really, his ability to move like that with an uphill plane – is unique,” Black said. “He’s able to actually create the upload point by getting down the mound and not compensating with his body to get there. That’s the unique piece of it. So you still see that clean delivery, but he’s somehow releasing it from a much lower height than normal.”

Opponents have hit just .147 off Woo’s four-seamer this season. He’s prone to home runs because he emphasizes high fastballs, but more often than not, that style helps him dominate.

“He locates it extremely well at the top part of the zone, so he’s elite at doing that one thing,” Black said. “And then you add in the velo component, and he’s 95-plus most of the time. A guy (like that) pitching at the top of the zone, he’s going to get a good amount of whiff.

“Now, the extra whiff that he gets, that’s the part we don’t understand fully. So that’s the deceptive piece. And maybe it’s because he’s got a two-seamer that works in the opposite direction. It’s hard to explain, but hitters feel it, and we’ve seen it play out over and over.”

For Woo, the last component was convincing himself to be the type of pitcher he’s become. Since Raleigh challenged him last summer to find a better routine and last longer in games, Woo has embraced the persona completely.

Starting pitching may never return to the 300- or even 250-inning benchmarks of the past. But for how the job has evolved, going six or seven innings every start is a remarkable achievement.

“I don’t think it’s talked about enough now with pitching – going deep into games and innings,” Woo said. “A lot of it’s just about strikeouts and velo and all that stuff. Being a workhorse is something that’s hard to quantify beyond innings, but I think the team feels it, the staff feels it, the coaches, the bullpen. It’s something that I take pride in.”