The Mariners have a great young core of pitchers. Bryan Woo is the newest addition in the rotation. However, things didn’t go so well in his first outing. Woo was called up from Double-A Arkansas when Marco Gonzales was placed on the 15-day injured list Saturday with a forearm strain. Woo had a 2.05 ERA over 44 innings and 59 strikeouts for Double-A Arkansas.
The 23-year-old Bay Area native traveled to Texas to join the Mariners in their series against the Rangers with a daunting task against the team with the second-best record in the MLB. Woo struggled from the start. His first two pitches were hits from Ezequiel Duran and Marcus Semien. Including three RBIs by Corey Seager and Jonah Heim. It only got worse, with three runs in the second inning before departing after throwing 47 pitches (33 strikes), forcing the Mariners to go to the bullpen and have a position player finish out the game. Most of his pitches were in the middle of the strike zone. Too many four-seams and new two-seam fastballs leaked over the heart of the plate. It’s easy to get away with in Double-A but against a team like this, it ain’t gonna cut it. He also struggled with his slider until the second inning was almost over.
After the game, Scott Servias shared his thoughts on Woo’s debut.
“We’ve been spoiled with the young pitchers who have come up and ran with it,” Servais said. “But they weren’t facing the type of offense Woo was up against today. They (Rangers) jumped on him early and were super-aggressive. Servias also said he’s confident he’ll bounce back. He never really got into his game. His game is moving his fastball around, getting into some secondary pitch and he wasn’t able to do that. He’ll get another chance”.
Woo also shared his thoughts on his performance and his strategy coming into the game.
“I was just trying to be in the zone early,” Woo said. “I left too many pitches middle. I saw firsthand that I’m going to pay for those mistakes. There are things I can build off of.”
Woo’s debut doesn’t tell the whole story. As Servias mentioned, the Mariners have great success with developing pitchers like George Kirby and Logan Gilbert; he’s in good hands. It just happens to be against a tough opponent. As far as the team goes, in four of the last six games the Mariners pitching has given up 10 runs or more. They aren’t producing the same kind of pitching we saw last year. It’s gonna take similar results this year in order to make it back to the playoffs.
Northwest Sports Desk 