Getting right to the good news: after skipping his start last night with forearm discomfort, Bryan Woo’s MRI came back clean, and he’ll avoid an IL stint.
“We feel really good about where Bryan is at,” said GM Justin Hollander.
It’s unclear when Woo will rejoin the rotation but Hollander says they’re anticipating early next week, although that would depend on how he feels.
“We’re really happy with how everything looks, so that’s a positive.”
Depending on how he feels, Woo will return to his progression, with no official shutdown period. The team will check in with Woo daily and see how he’s feeling, and make decisions from there. It’s less certainty than anyone—the team, the fans, Woo himself—would like, but it’s necessary given the development of their young starter.
“Bryan is a really unique story. He just doesn’t have the volume that major league pitchers have usually established in their career,” said Hollander, saying that the team did the MRI to make sure they weren’t missing anything after Woo reported feeling some pain out of an “abundance of caution.”
Unlike a pitcher like Emerson Hancock, a workhorse SEC starter who tallied triple-digit innings in college, Woo, pitching mostly out of the bullpen, pitched sparsely at Cal Poly, only crossing the 25-inning threshold once during his three years there. His college summers weren’t spent in the ultra-competitive Cape Cod League but the Alaska League. He lost time to the pandemic, and then to Tommy John surgery, which knocked out the majority of his 2021-2022 season.
“He just hasn’t been through the things that typical starting pitchers have been through,” said Hollander. “He didn’t pitch a lot in college, he didn’t pitch a lot in the minor leagues.”
Woo pitched himself out of the minor leagues very quickly: at no level did he strike out fewer than 30% of batters faced. He was utterly dominant, and also extremely efficient, so much so that the Mariners also struggled to get him enough time during his rehab starts as he was coming back from forearm inflammation earlier this season. Woo mowed through the hitters in Tacoma effortlessly, barely breaking a sweat as he reached his prescribed innings limit long before he ever reached his prescribed pitch count. For a true challenge, Woo had to return to the majors, which meant also returning to the grind of the major leagues.
It’s not something the team has undertaken lightly, hence the MRI yesterday. While fans might don their doctors’ coats on Twitter and complain about overuse, rest assured the training staff also knows how to count innings; the challenges they’re navigating are much more complex, and specific to Woo’s unique backstory. And it’s not something the team would undertake if they believed there was any risk of creating further damage by having Woo throwing, per Hollander.
“We’re looking at a bunch of different things on how we can help him continue to maintain and improve volume over time, just to get used to the schedule that’s required,” said Hollander. He compared it to weights in a gym: once you’ve conquered it, lifting a a twenty- pound weight won’t build any additional strength, but what does one do if the next weight available is a hundred-pound barbell? That’s the unique challenge the Mariners and the training staff have been navigating all season with Woo.
“For us, the number one thing is that he is healthy,” said Hollander. “He’s so good. He’s so unique. We want to make sure that he is healthy. Now that we’ve checked that box, it’s just about working with Trent [Blank] and Woody [Pitching Coach Pete Woodworth] our our HP [High Performance] team to build a routine that works for him.”
Hollander also mentioned the Dodgers as another team that’s been getting creative in order to manage pitcher health after some injuries befell both their starting rotation and bullpen.
“Everybody’s unique. Everybody’s individual in what is going to make them feel good in between outings and prepare them to go pitch at the highest level. He’s obviously pitching at a level that is really unique in this league right now, and we just need to help them and make sure that he’s prepared to go do that on a regular schedule.”
Other injury updates:
- Andrés Muñoz (back) also had an MRI done, along with a bone scan, which both came back clean. “Structurally, he looks great” said Hollander. He had an injection on Tuesday to try to treat the lingering bit of discomfort he was feeling, and is considered day to day.
- Ty France (heel) is graduating from limited baseball activities to ramping up to more intense baseball activities. The team doesn’t anticipate him being out much longer than the 10 day period, although he will have to manage the pain until it fully heals. The team has no concern about further injury or reinjury, however.
- Jorge Polanco (hamstring) is on the last stage of his rehab, running the bases, and assuming the running goes well, he’ll head out on a rehab assignment soon.
- Gregory Santos (strained lat) continues to build volume in the bullpen, as well as continuing throwing long toss (105 feet) to prepare himself to go face hitters. “It’s coming out better and better each time, he feels more comfortable each time,” said Hollander. “He had a setback earlier; we don’t want to push forward and risk a longer setback again, but feel really good that he is progressing towards facing hitters.”
- Gabe Speier (left rotator cuff) has been rehabbing in Arizona while the team was on the road but is back now in Seattle. He’s doing plyo work and is “on or ahead of schedule.” Per Hollander, “we feel really good about how he feels so far. Those are injuries you don’t know how long it can linger and right now he feels good, so excited about that”
- Matt Brash (TJ surgery) is out of his brace and is in Arizona, anticipating to start his rehab process soon.