Bryan Woo just keeps strengthening his place in Mariners history with every start

Because Logan Gilbert has made back-to-back Opening Day starts, Bryan Woo is not officially the ace of the Mariners. But in the wake of his 75th career start on Sunday, now is as good a time as any to acknowledge that Woo is going places where few Mariners pitchers have gone before.

He did his usual thing in the Mariners' 5-2 win over the Rangers, pitching exactly 7.0 innings for the third time in his last four tries and allowing just two earned runs. He's now allowed six earned runs over 26.0 innings through his first four starts, which works out to a 2.25 ERA.

Woo's ERA is under 3.00, you say? Well, it must be a day ending in Y. He also posted sub-3.00 ERAs in 2024 and 2025, so it's only because of his 4.21 ERA in 2023 that he "only" has a 3.14 ERA for his career.

As it is, that ERA is the second-best for a Mariners pitcher through his first 75 starts with the franchise:

1. Hisashi Iwakuma: 2.93
2. Bryan Woo: 3.14
3. George Kirby: 3.37
4. James Paxton: 3.38
5. Luis Castillo: 3.44

There's some recency bias at play with this leaderboard, and the notable absences of Randy Johnson and Félix Hernández are easy to explain. Johnson was still a wild thing well after he made his 75th start for the Mariners, after which he went on to become arguably the greatest left-hander ever. Hernández was still in his early 20s when he made his 75th start.

Yet even if we're a long way from knowing whether Woo's future holds the same greatness that those two achieved, at least he's in a better spot than Iwakuma was after 75 starts. He was 33 and on his way to flaming out at 36 years old. Woo is only 26, and the Mariners stand to control him through his age-29 season in 2029.

Bryan Woo is keeping it simple, but also switching it up just enough to make things interesting

At this stage of his career, really the only frustrating thing about Woo is how hard it is to explain his ongoing excellence in simple terms.

He throws either a four-seamer or a sinker about 75 percent of the time, and both pitches average about 95 mph. That should be a recipe for efficiency more so than for dominance, but hitters just have never been able to get to either pitch on a consistent basis. He has that ethereal quality known as "deception," and Cal Raleigh can vouch for how it has a special knack for making hitters angry.

So far in 2026, though, we are seeing Woo bust out more sweepers. He used the pitch 9.0 percent of the time last season, and that rate is now up to 14.2 percent. Right-handed batters have especially felt the sting, thus far hitting just .100 with a 40.0 whiff percentage against it.

In the scheme of things, perhaps this is less of a change and more of a wrinkle. But when you're off to the kind of career start that Woo is off to, you throw out neither the baby nor the bath water. You just keep rolling and wait for hitters to tell you it's not working.

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