Bryan Woo was never supposed to be this good. His college career was unimpressive at best with a 6.36 ERA over just 69.1 innings and he wasn’t taken until the sixth round.
Sure, maybe the Seattle Mariners thought he could be a back-of-the-rotation piece and, to be fair, they were already much higher on him than other organizations. But Trent Blank, the director of pitching strategy for the Mariners, was one of the few to predict what Woo would really be capable of. Just four years later, that bet has paid off big time.
The Mariners may only now be finding out how good Bryan Woo can be
Woo shot up through the minor league system very quickly. He spent much of his rookie year with High-A Everett and by his second year as a pro, he was tearing it up in Double-A Arkansas. He performed well enough to get called up to replace an injured Marco Gonzales and he hasn’t looked back ever since. Despite being sidelined by a few injuries here and there, he has a career 3.33 ERA over his 48 big league starts.
Now fully healthy (at least for now), it seems like 2025 will be the biggest step forward for him yet. Not only is he the only pitcher in baseball to pitch six innings or more in each of his starts, his 2.84 ERA and 0.89 WHIP illustrate that he hasn’t exactly sacrificed quality for quantity. He’s still maintaining elite command, walking just 4.1 percent of hitters, but his strikeout rate of 25.4 percent is slightly higher than his previous personal best.
So what are the reasons for his success? Much of it has to do with how he’s fleshed out his arsenal to be more competitive. In his rookie year, he relied heavily on his four-seam fastball and sinker while his breaking ball offerings were lackluster. Since then, his sweeper and slider have become two of his most potent weapons.
This year, his sweeper has a 36.8 whiff rate and his slider has held opposing hitters to a .067 slugging percentage. His performance in his last start against the best offense in baseball was one of the few silver linings of the Yankees series.
The Mariners rotation has been uncharacteristically shaky, with fellow 2023 call-up Bryce Miler taking the biggest step back and now hitting the IL. With Luis Castillo struggling to find consistency and Logan Gilbert still recovering from his own IL stint, Bryan Woo has risen into the role of being the most valuable arm on staff. Ideally, he would pitch more than the 121.1 innings we saw of him last year and if his current pace is any indication, he’ll cruise past it.
There was a quite a bit of criticism of the front office this past offseason, after Dipoto stood firm on the organization’s decision to hold onto all of their starting pitchers rather than using one of them to acquire more offense. Given how Woo’s season has gone and how much the lineup has exceeded expectations, it seems like it was absolutely the right choice.
Now we’ll just have to see whether he and the rest of the team can carry their success to the finish line and help Seattle maintain their narrow lead in the division.