Bryan Woo outduels Kumar Rocker as bats heat up at last for 9-2 victory

Bats prop up Woo’s strong effort; Cal Raleigh homers for the second straight game

In the 2021 MLB Draft, much pre-draft hoopla centered around a pair of star pitchers from Vanderbilt, Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker. The Texas Rangers would take Leiter second overall, and then got another chance to take Rocker with the third overall pick in 2022, after the Mets, who drafted him tenth overall in 2021, declined to sign him due to health concerns.

Bryan Woo, also part of the 2021 Draft, attracted significantly less intrigue when he was drafted in the sixth round that year, similar to now-teammate Bryce Miller, taken in the fourth round. Even though both have been productive major-league pitchers longer than Rocker, whose journey to the bigs was slowed by injury, make no mistake: both of them know exactly where they were drafted, and who was drafted in front of them. Each young pitcher got a chance this series to stack up against some prime competition, with Miller throwing against Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom last night, and Woo lining up against his fellow 2021 draftee in the first-rounder Rocker, turning in a dominant performance of seven innings, one run allowed with seven strikeouts, looking more like the first-rounder on the mound tonight.

Not that it got off to an easy start; postgame, Woo called his start “an outing that was a little bit all over the place.” Woo’s first inning was a mirror image of Miller’s last night, also requiring close to 30 pitches with about only half of those going for strikes. Woo had some bad luck—a miscommunication in the outfield caused a drop on what should have been an easy first out four batters in—but he also didn’t help himself out, opening up by walking Marcus Semien on four pitches, none of which were particularly close. Despite having the bases loaded, Woo did manage to escape the inning with only one run in, thanks in part to a timely mound visit from Cal Raleigh, after which he struck out Josh Jung and Jake Burger.

“Control what you can control, and get back in the zone,” Woo recited, recounting the mound visit he’d had with Cal, who reminded him he was a groundball away from ending the inning with minimal damage. “That’s all you really try to do in those situations, just minimize the damage, keep making good pitches, and control what you can control. The other stuff doesn’t really matter.”

And just as Miller did last night, Woo was able to tune out the noise and settle in, starting the second by striking out Jonah Heim en route to a 1-2-3 inning. He worked around some singles in the third and fourth to hang some more zeroes and seemed locked in from that point, ending with 17 of 27 first-pitch strikes and needing just 91 pitches to get through seven after using up about a third of that in the first inning alone.

And as they did last night, Mariners again helped out their young starter, rallying back with a four-run third inning. The Mariners finally were able to hit Rocker hard: J.P. Crawford singled (100.5 mph EV!), and came home on what was generously ruled a triple for Julio (100.7 mph EV).

Jorge Polanco, Professional Hitter, was able to bring Julio home on a sac fly, and then Cal Raleigh stung a double (104.7 EV). Randy Arozarena was able to work a full-count walk, and then advanced to third while Cal scored on a passed ball that pinged around the backstop at T-Mobile Park like a drunken pinball. Luke Raley then brought Randy home on yet another hard-hit ball, a double that went scorching off the bat at 108 mph EV, to make it 4-1.

Cal Raleigh extended the Mariners’ lead in the fifth against reliever Caleb Boushley, crushing a fastball that Boushley very much wishes he had back to make it 5-1 Mariners.

The Mariners kept it up against Boushley in the seventh, taking advantage of a command outage (two walks) to load the bases with just one out. They then got a little lucky, as Raley hit a ball hard just far enough to the right of Semien that he couldn’t glove it cleanly, scoring two more. Then Rowdy Tellez came up with a final two-run dagger, and even though he got thrown out trying to stretch this to a triple, in my heart this is a triple:

The nearly 30,000 fans at T-Mobile Park were overcome with joy at the offensive explosion and Rowdy rumbling for three, and didn’t even boo him for making the third out of the inning. The giddiness continued through the inning break, after a wayward Hotdog From Heaven floated down onto the field and Luke Raley was sent to retrieve it. EAT IT! EAT IT! EAT IT! chanted the crowd. (Jen Mueller later found out from Raley that the bag was empty, allowing us to believe that Raley would have, in fact, eaten it. In my revisionist history of this win, Rowdy got the triple, and Raley ate the hot dog.

The Rangers got another run off Gregory Santos in garbage time, when Jung, who had doubled, scored on a ball hit by Jake Burger that ate Miles Mastrobuoni up at third, Charlie Brown-style. The same thing almost happened to J.P. Crawford, but he was able to recover well enough to complete the double play and end the game—the Mariners’ largest margin of victory by a significant amount, and the first win they’ve had that didn’t come via walk-off or a save.

While five runs are nice (and nine runs are even better), Woo’s pitching was the star of the show tonight, a dominant statement from the sixth-rounder. While there’s no question Woo knows exactly where he and Rocker ranked in draft position, he was able to put that out of his mind, recover from the shaky first inning, and turn in a powerful, lengthy performance that saved a beat-up bullpen for the night.

“Bryan’s about as cool as they come in terms of the way he approaches the mound,” said Dan Wilson. “That was about as good a mindset as we’ve seen, and it really paid off for him tonight.”