When Bryan Woo had his 13-strikeout performance against the Angels on September 13, 2025, the Mariners’ social team anointed him “Leonardo de Wooski” with tiny art emoji, a nickname that his teammates (okay, Bryce Miller) have enjoyed poking fun at ever since. But today’s performance might have surpassed even that baker’s dozen of strikeouts, where Woo went six innings and gave up two runs. Today, trying to avoid a sweep at the hands of the Athletics, Woo went eight innings, the first time a Mariners starter
has gotten to that mark since George Kirby did it on June 29th, shutting out the A’s en route to a 2-0 win.
Today A’s starter Gage Jump pitched half as many innings as Woo and had one more whiff, but Woo effectively throttled the A’s over eight innings, allowing just one hit while striking out nine. He mixed his secondaries heavily, getting the A’s hitters to pound the ball into the ground – nine of his outs came via groundout, and the furthest any A’s hitter got a ball to travel was Jeff McNeil, who threw his bat at a changeup and was rewarded with a 310-foot soft flyout.
Woo’s changeup featured heavily today against the A’s lefty-stacked lineup; he threw it 14% of the time, over double his usual usage, using the pitch to generate many of those groundball outs or foul balls to put hitters in bad counts. Once he had them on the ropes in those counts, Woo was able to effectively mix his fastballs and sweeper for the putaway shot.
“I’d say it’s a feel thing, most of the time,” said Woo. “It’s what’s working that day, what feels good. Keep the line of communication open, and mix and match from there. But today, everything felt good, so it just made things a lot easier for us.”
Woo was aided in his big day by batterymate Jhonny Pereda, who not only called a good game for Woo but also made some instrumental ABS challenges. One came early in the game in the third inning, on a low-stakes challenge with two outs that nonetheless represented the difference between a 1-0 and an 0-1 count (it would end up an inning-ending strikeout) – and was risky, given that the Mariners were already down to one challenge after Weston Wilson had challenged and lost in the previous inning.
“It’s gotta be close, for a walk or a strikeout. If it’s early, I gotta be 100% sure. If we’ve got two strikes, I go even when I’m like, 80% sure,” said Pereda. “But it’s pretty hard because the ABS changes every time, for every batter. So you gotta know who’s hitting and find the top [of the zone]. Early, it’s pretty tough to to call a challenge at the top or the bottom of the zone, because you don’t know.” So on that 0-0 pitch he was? “100% sure, yes.”
Pereda’s other challenge deserves just as much attention as any of Woo’s strikeouts. Pereda put the Mariners’ final challenge of the day on the line in the seventh after Woo got into a long battle with Lawrence Butler, whose 14-game hit streak was snapped today by Woo. On the eighth pitch of the at-bat, Woo spotted a slider on the outer edge that home plate umpire D.J. Reyburn ruled a ball; Pereda challenged and won, and Woo went on to get Carlos Cortes to ground out softly on a changeup for a clean seventh.
“The challenges today were huge,” said Woo. “[Pereda’s] been awesome. He’s just very open to, how do I get better? How do I help you? What do you like for setups? What do you like for sequencing locations? He’s just a sponge, and that’s all you can ask for from your teammates, that they want to be the best they can.”
“There was also one I wanted to challenge,” said Woo. “It was a ball, so that was also great by him.”
Meanwhile, the Mariners scuffled to get anything going against A’s starter, lefty Gage Jump, the first time through the order, with the only damage a leadoff single from Randy Arozarena. They did start to make some noise the second time through, though: Dominic Canzone led off the inning with a nice left-on-left single and Julio Rodríguez followed that up with a single of his own, breaking an 0-for-13 stretch. That brought up up Cal Raleigh, who had narrowly missed a home run in his first at-bat. Cal kept it fair this time but settled for a single, bringing home Canzone, trucking around the bases as fast as a pair of Easter hams on legs can. It was a nice piece of hitting from Cal on a curveball down as Raleigh continues to rebuild what’s been his worst season as a big-leaguer.
“I feel like [Cal’s] very balanced and a little bit more of a pure hitter right now,” said Dan Wilson postgame. “Still getting a chance to hit the ball out of the ballpark at times, but I feel like he’s in a really good spot as far as what he’s looking for. His plan is good. He’s swinging the bat and doing the things you need to do offensively in the batter’s box, and it’s really showing, and that’s a tribute to the work he’s put in and the work the hitting guys have put in with him.”
J.P. Crawford kept the line moving with a single to bring home Julio, and then Naylor singled to re-load the bases. Unfortunately, Weston Wilson, despite having the handedness advantage, struck out on three pitches, putting some pressure on rookie Michael Arroyo. Arroyo, in swing mode on his debut day, struck out on a 99 mph fastball from Jump, and Jhonny Pereda couldn’t come up with a big two-out hit, capping the damage at just two runs for Woo to work with – and all the offense the Mariners lineup would be able to scrape up against an A’s bullpen that looked steady as it has all season, combining to cover the rest of Gage’s outing with four innings of shutout, one-hit, six-strikeout ball.
But two runs would be all Woo would need, even despite a pair of walks to former Mariner Donovan Walton (we believe in being nice to former teammates, Bryan, but not that nice). A well-timed mound visit from Pereda in the eighth—after Woo had issued the second walk to Walton but rebounded to strike out Alika Williams on three pitches, all straight heat—helped push Woo over the finish line for his best start of the season, and Andrés Muñoz came in to put down the top of the A’s lineup in the ninth, getting two groundouts and a strikeout on that nasty changeup.
But today’s game belongs to Woo, painting a vintage masterpiece in a month where the rotation has been disappointing. Maybe by strikeouts alone it’s not Leonardo da Wooski; personally, I prefer the modernists anyway (Woossily Kandinksy, PabWoo PicassWoo, Francis WOOBAcon).
