Bryan Woo is the Mariners' best hope for their next long-term contract

Seattle doesn’t usually win bidding wars. So when it does land value, it has to squeeze every drop out of it. That’s what the Julio Rodríguez and Cal Raleigh extensions really represent. Two rare deals that give the Mariners something most teams can’t manufacture on command — cost certainty with real impact.

When you lock in cornerstone production before it hits the open market, you stop playing defense every offseason and start building with intention. Because you’re not constantly re-paying your own core at free-agent prices.

That’s why the next extension matters so much. If Seattle wants early deals to be an actual competitive advantage instead of a one-time flex, the front office has to keep stacking them.

Bryan Woo is the cleanest next swing.

Mariners can’t afford to waste the Bryan Woo extension window

Mike Axisa of CBS Sports recently flagged Woo as an extension candidate, and the timing logic is simple: if you wait for arbitration to do its thing, you’re volunteering for annual price hikes and a more complicated negotiation later. The comp in that conversation is almost too perfect: Tanner Bibee’s five-year, $48 million deal with a club option, signed at a similar service-time level. 

Mariners fans can argue about ERA+ and comps if they want, but Woo’s case doesn’t need gymnastics. He’s already proven he can carry real innings in the majors (nearly 396 career innings), and his 2025 season looked like a pitcher you normally only get by paying top-of-the-market dollars: 2.94 ERA in 186.2 innings with a 0.93 WHIP and 198 strikeouts. 

The most encouraging part is that Woo doesn’t profile like a fluke. FanGraphs’ Statcast-based pitching leaderboard for 2025 had him around a 3.07 xERA range while sitting in the mid-90s with his fastball, and even leaned into the idea of Woo as a steady, repeatable type (“metronomic”) rather than a guy living on thin ice.

Of course, the hesitation is durability — because pitchers always come with an asterisk, and Woo has had enough “monitor it” moments to make that part of the discussion unavoidable. But that’s exactly why a Bibee-style framework makes so much sense. It gives Woo real security now, and it gives the Mariners cost control through arbitration with a structure that protects them if things go sideways. 

And from Seattle’s perspective, this isn’t just about Woo as a player. It’s about financial flexibility while building out the roster. Julio and Raleigh’s deals work best when the Mariners keep finding smart, early ways to lock in impact talent before the bill comes due. If you let every pitcher ride the arb escalator into free agency, you eventually end up paying retail for your own rotation — and that’s when contention windows start shrinking.

Woo is the kind of extension you try to finish before it becomes a saga. If the Mariners can lock down his arb years (and maybe buy out a free-agent year or two) at something in the Bibee neighborhood, it’s the exact kind of bet that can make the next three to five seasons feel a lot less fragile.