Bryan Woo used to dominate the A’s when they played in Oakland, mere minutes from where the Woo family home is located in Alameda. But when the A’s moved to Sacramento, it seemed like that might have curtailed some of Woo’s Coliseum-based magic. In Bryan Woo’s last two starts against the A’s at Sutter Home Health Park, he gave up a combined 10 runs, five per outing. With the Mariners on a losing streak and Woo himself wanting to make up for his last two turns against the Swingin’ A’s, Woo turned
in a gem: seven innings where he gave up just one run on one hit, striking out seven and walking two—a number that annoyed him even postgame.
“A little bit of a revenge game,” said Woo postgame. “You give up games like that, runs like that. the last two times facing them, you go out with a little more of a chip on your shoulder to make sure you go out there and do your job tonight.”
The “A” in A’s stands for A-ggressive, and they were, hacking after Woo’s offerings on the plate. Woo was able to get into favorable counts and use the A’s aggressiveness against them, although it stung him early: in a six-pitch battle with Brent Rooker in the first with two outs, Woo made a mistake and left a four-seamer right in the heart of the plate for Rooker to demolish (108.2 EV) for a solo shot over the left field wall.
“I have to do a better job of coming out and not just being okay with giving up runs early. I know it’s going to happen, but it’s just a discipline thing. But you have to be able to turn the page and just keep making pitches.”
Woo did make his pitches, shutting down the A’s after that and keeping the game close enough to where the offense could get back into it…a process that took a while.
The Mariners hitters were equally aggressive against hard-throwing A’s starter Luis Morales, putting the ball in play but not seeing any results from it: flyouts couldn’t make it past the warning track, and ground balls found gloves, despite Josh Naylor scalding a ball at 108 mph. Just one start after setting a career-high with five innings against the Angels, Morales did it again tonight, carrying a perfect game into the sixth inning on just fifty-something pitches. Morales is a tough customer, for sure, and the command issues that plagued his early starts weren’t present tonight; the Mariners hitters were mostly swinging at strikes and not expanding too much, they just either didn’t make contact (striking out six times in six innings) or put that contact directly into a glove. The crowd of almost 37,000 made their displeasure known as the Mariners hitters were turned away inning after inning.
Thankfully, Eugenio Suárez was ready to receive some love from the Mariners faithful, ruining Morales’s perfecto, no-hitter, and shutout all with one swing of the bat. He leaned on this slider and kept it just fair into Edgar’s for his fortieth (40th!) home run of the season.
This was stung 113.8 mph off the bat, and puts Geno into a tie with Aaron Judge for the fourth-most homers in MLB this season. He also became one of eight active players with multiple 40-plus home run seasons (I bet you can guess the other seven names on the list pretty easily, but will leave it as a game to play in the comments). Over the last 10-ish games (since last Monday), Suárez is still striking out at an alarming clip—35%—but has boosted his slugging to over .500 for a wRC+ of 135. Perhaps the famously streaky Suárez has entered an upswing?
Jorge Polanco followed that up with a very nice at-bat—after, it must be said, a truly abysmal one earlier—working a single in a ten-pitch at-bat and probably shaving an inning of work off Morales’s night, although the rookie did complete the sixth for a new career high after a 1-2-3 bottom of the sixth.
But Bryan Woo said “anything you can do I can do better” and worked through the seventh inning, working around a leadoff error by Cole Young with a popout from Jacob Wilson, freshly returned from the IL, and then got Lawrence Butler to ground into a double play first-pitch swinging (credit to Young, who made up for his earlier gaffe by fielding this ball cleanly, and credit to Josh Naylor, who made a sweet sweeping pick on a low-ish throw from Crawford that looked more hockey goalie than first baseman). It was an appropriate finish for Woo, who threw 88 pitches to complete his seven innings. Of those 88, the first three batters in the A’s order—Kurtz, Langeliers, and Rooker—accounted for 43 of those pitches. The A’s lineup isn’t quite as top-heavy as the Mets’, but it’s certainly bottom-lighter. (Bottom-Lighter sounds like an off-brand GLP-1, sorry about that.)
“The top of the lineup, they want to set the table for the rest of the lineup,” said Woo, “so I just had to make sure that I was being aggressive to my spots, not giving in at all, making sure that if they’re going to get on, it’s going to be my way. Obviously that showed with the two walks [Kurtz and Rooker], obviously I’m not happy with those, but you know, they did earn their way on.”
The Mariners hitters rewarded Woo’s strong start in the bottom of the inning, tagging A’s reliever Elvis Alvarado for a pair of solo shots. First up was Josh Naylor, with his 100th career home run. The press box judges awarded this bat flip a perfect 10.
Then Jorge Polanco built on his last at-bat, getting a handle on this 100.7 mph fastball in on his hands and punching it just over the right-center wall. 368 feet is shorter than several other flyballs hit by the Mariners tonight, but it’s like they say in real estate: location, location, location.
With the Mariners protecting a 3-1 lead, Dan Wilson went to the bullpen for Matt Brash, who got his first two outs but then gave up a ringing double to pinch-hitter Carlos Cortez, who jumped all over a 1-1 changeup that got lost and found itself in the middle of the plate. With lefty Nick Kurtz due up—and some egregious lefty-righty splits (a 72 wRC+ against lefties!)—Dan the Man got aggressive, bringing in Gabe Speier, who promptly crumpled up Kurtz like a sheet of paper and discarded the A’s mini-threat.
Staff writer Zach Mason has schooled me in the art of studying Gabe Speier’s subtle strikeout celebrations, including classics like “the bitchy wizard.” Tonight we have a new one to add to the pile: “teenager in detention throwing away their homework.”
Justin Sterner was able to put down the Mariners 1-2-3 in the eighth, but those pesky A’s just wouldn’t go away. They stacked three straight ground-ball, weak-contact singles against Andrés Muñoz in the ninth (xBAs of .560, .440, and .260), scoring a run, and then Muñoz seemed to lose the plot momentarily, walking free-swinging Lawrence Butler to load the bases. A scary moment ensued, as Darrel Hernaiz hit a ball deep to center, but a strong throw in from Julio Rodríguez, excellently blocked by Cal Raleigh, kept the runner at third. Muñoz then buckled down and got JJ Bleday swinging after three pitches. For someone who has dedicated his life to saving helpless fluffy itty bitty kittycats, this is a very, very mean at-bat, so much so that you can only witness the final pitch of it, but assume the first two pitches looked very much the same.
Not the easiest win, but a win, and an aura-clearing win at that. Woo gets revenge on the A’s, the Mariners get off the schneid, finally we get to break out our “69” jokes (this was Muñoz’s 69th career save! Eat your heart out Alex Mayer), and the Mariners get another one-run win to recapture some of that chaos ball magic. All hail solo homers, which won’t kill you unless they Transformer into something greater than the sum of their parts, as they did tonight. While Mariners fans would happily take a more lopsided win going forward, even a narrow win to wash out the taste of the dreadful road trip helps.
