Woo pitches through 'rust' in return after missed start

CLEVELAND -- Through the first six starts of 2024, there was no pitcher more efficient than Bryan Woo.

His WHIP was sparkling (0.53). His walk per nine innings rate was incredible (0.53). And his ERA was historic (1.07, the best mark through the first six starts of a season in franchise history).

And while those stats may not look as shiny after he surrendered three runs in four innings in the Mariners’ 8-0 loss to the Guardians on Wednesday, his mere presence on the mound was a win for his club after he was scratched from his start last week due to a right forearm issue.

“It was good to get him back out there,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “I knew there’d be a little rust; that’s always going to be a concern whenever a guy doesn’t pitch for 12 days.”

While Woo’s MRI eventually came back “perfectly clean,” his initial injury diagnosis sent shockwaves through the Pacific Northwest, especially considering he started the year on the IL with right medial elbow inflammation.

But in the times he was on the mound prior to that injury, he was the model of efficiency. Despite being on a fairly strict pitch count, Woo managed to go 6+ innings in four of those six starts and was the second pitcher in MLB history to have a sub-1.20 ERA with a 12.0+ K/BB ratio through his first six starts, joining Cliff Lee in 2008.

While Woo was able to find that efficiency later in his start on Wednesday (he needed just 17 pitches to get through the third and fourth inning), he was done in by a sluggish start. Woo ended up throwing 30 pitches in the first inning (nine of which came in one at-bat against José Ramírez), with Cleveland scratching a run across on a Josh Naylor RBI single.

“We were hoping he could go five, but where we were at in the ballgame and how many pitches he threw in the first inning kind of eliminated that,” Servais said.

An inning later, Woo got two outs on five pitches before he gave up a double to No. 9 hitter Bo Naylor that was followed by a two-run home run from Steven Kwan on an inside fastball.

“Pretty bad,” Woo said when asked to describe his start. “Just not efficient.”

While Woo ended up bouncing back and retired the last seven batters he faced, it ended up being a moot point.

“Not going more than five put more stress on the bullpen and I’m sure they weren’t ready to go that early,” he said. “That makes it hard on everyone for the rest of the series. I just didn’t do my job.”

After the game, Woo said that “he didn’t feel great physically, but it is what it is.”

“We were going to be very guarded with him no matter how it went but after the first inning it was nicer to see him out there get us a little deeper in the game,” Servais said. “[His command] was an issue early on but once he got into the third and fourth inning he used the sweeper to slow them down. He’ll take the ball the next time around and hopefully be a little bit better.”

A day after recording 11 hits in the series opener, their bats went silent against Guardians starter Tanner Bibee. Bibee tossed six scoreless innings with a career-high 12 strikeouts and didn’t allow a Mariner to reach third base.

Bibee’s penultimate strikeout resulted in Servais watching the rest of the game from the clubhouse, as both he and J.P. Crawford were ejected for arguing a called third strike to end the top of the fifth inning.

“[Crawford] has one of the better eyes in the game and when the first pitch [of the game] is 4-5 inches off the plate but is called a strike, there’s going to be issues,” Servais said.

Crawford agreed with his manager’s assessment.

“We all try to have good competitive at-bats but when the bat’s being taken out of your hands after the first pitch it’s hard to come back from that,” he said.