Life of Bryan
How a conversation with Big Dumper unlocked the All Star potential of Bryan Woo, the league's unlikeliest ace
Note: if this is your first time reading The Enni Way, start here to understand my summer of going (strategically) insane about baseball.
May 18 - Mariners @ Padres (W, 6-1)
On May 18, the Mariners were headed down to SoCal to take on the San Diego Padres during rivals weekend, in the first official Vedder Cup.1 Another first: I got to dress Z in my Mariners gear the way she’s so often suited me up for Dodgers games. Obviously I had to have her rep our 2025 superstar, Cal Raleigh.
The Padres are a good team (as of this game, they were battling with the Dodgers for the top of the National League West) but the Ms had already won the previous two games in this series. Today, we had our eyes on a sweep. And I was optimistic, because taking the mound for us was Bryan Woo.
Nothing about Bryan’s journey to the big leagues has been a Cinderella story. Born and raised in Oakland, Bryan was undersized most of his childhood. He played infield in high school, only stepping in to pitch when his coach got desperate. While kids around him got onto travel ball teams and were recruited by colleges, Bryan walked on at Cal Poly, the school he chose because of its academics. Once he made the team, it didn’t exactly go great. In his final year with the Mustangs, he was allowing more than 6 runs a game, on average.
But there was something Mariners scouts noticed about Bryan’s form: his extremely low release. If he could master the rising fastball, it would look like it was coming right out of the ground into a batter’s face. He could be unhittable. So, despite the fact that he’d just undergone Tommy John surgery on his elbow, the Mariners selected Bryan in the sixth round of the 2021 draft. Then, they sent him to camp.
Mariners pitchers go to “Dominate the Zone Pitching Camp,” a program focused on increasing velocity and developing a strike-first attitude. Dominate the Zone is part of a broader seven-week high performance training held every fall in Peoria, Arizona. About 50 farm system players gather together for customized training designed to help them become BVY: the Best Version of Yourself. Each one is presented with data-driven breakdowns of what they need to focus on to improve their game. But BVY goes beyond the field. The camp’s high-performance training includes mindfulness meditation; nutritional information; tracking sleep, soreness, and mood; English classes for the Latin American players2; community outreach like volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club of Peoria or a local food bank; and teaching players to cook for themselves and lift weights. For pitchers there are velocity-development drills like long toss and weighted balls. But more central is the team philosophy: have confidence in your stuff and go on the attack. As then-pitching coordinator Max Weiner said: “You’re a thoroughbred, go run.”
Bryan shot up through the minor leagues like a rocket. He perfected two blistering rising fastballs that made batters dizzy. A year later, in June 2023, two of the Ms starting pitchers were put on the injured list (IL), leaving a hole in the starting rotation. So, after just 101 combined minor-league innings, Bryan got the call. He was in the big leagues. But, like every other step of his improbably, lightning-fast rise, Bryan’s debut didn’t go to script. In front of eighteen family and friends who flew to Arlington to watch him take the mound against division rivals the Texas Rangers, he got absolutely worked. Marcus Semien cracked his first pitch for a double. Corey Seager ripped his second into right-center field, a score-running single. Bryan was pulled in the second inning after the Rangers torched him for six runs.
But Bryan didn’t stay down. He bounced back and became one of the Mariners’ most effective contributors as a rookie, managing to stand out on a roster full of pitchers who would be the ace on any other team. His stuff, as they say, was good—but he couldn’t stay on the field. His rookie season ended when elbow inflammation sent him to the IL, a problem that sidelined him again at the beginning of the 2024 season. When his elbow finally got right, his hamstrings started acting up.
In July, Bryan was pitching well in a start against the White Sox. But after just four innings, he left with hamstring soreness. To that point in his career, he’d never managed to pitch into the seventh inning. Two days later, as the team prepared for a game against Boston at Fenway Park, a teammate pulled Bryan aside for a chat. Not just any teammate—Bryan’s catcher and roommate, Cal Raleigh.
By that point, Cal had been in the big leagues for three years. He’d already secured his place in Mariners legend by hitting the home run that broke a 21-season playoff drought. And at the time that he pulled Bryan aside, Cal was putting together what would become a platinum-glove season, making him the first Mariner to ever receive the league’s most prized defensive award. In Fenway Park, one of the great cathedrals of the game, Cal got Bryan’s full attention. And he told him: Dude. Get your shit together.
I’m paraphrasing… but probably not by much. Basically, Cal told him to get his body right—if he couldn’t stay on the mound, he wasn’t doing his job. High performance camp hadn’t truly prepared Bryan for life in the show. And Cal would know. The son of a pro player turned college coach, Cal has a famously grueling workout regimen. It pays off; in 2024, Cal led the Major Leagues in innings caught (1,122), and led the Mariners in games played (153). The minor league trainers “baby these guys,” Cal later told Seattle Times’ Adam Jude. “[T]hey need to learn how their body works and make starts and be available. Because when you’re at your best, you’re making every single start, and a lot of our guys pride themselves on doing that.”
Bryan listened. While he’d previously prioritized rest and recovery between outings, he shifted his focus to the weight room. A few days after Cal’s come-to-Jesus talk, Bryan pitched into the seventh inning for the first time—a feat he’d repeat in every outing through the rest of that season. He laid off the analytics and put his full faith in his catcher to call pitches. “I just listen to whatever Cal says,” Bryan told Seattle Sports’ Shannon Drayer. “I’m not shaking him anytime soon.”
Bryan finished the year with a 2.89 earned run average (ERA), and a 0.90 WHIP—the lowest in franchise history. The Mariners started playing Ric Flair’s iconic “Woo!” whenever Bryan got a strikeout. That led to a deal for custom Flair cleats; on the day Bryan debuted them, he took a perfect game into the seventh inning. He was finding his stride.
In the off-season, Bryan developed his secondary pitches and worked on his intangibles—his riz. He grew his hair out and committed to an aggressive approach. “I love the thought process of: pitching is offense,” he said in an interview for former major league pitcher Dallas Braden’s YouTube channel, Slab Lab. “Go set the tone, go be a dog, go shove it down someone’s throat and then get the boys on offense.”
He’s a thoroughbred; let him run.
Early in the 2025 season, injuries took down the M’s top three pitchers. Bryan stepped up. In his first eight starts, he ranked among the best pitchers in the majors with a 2.84 ERA and a 50-to-8 strikeout-to-walk ratio—and he was the only pitcher in baseball to complete six innings in every start. He became the standout of the rotation and a potential All Star—just like his former roomie, Cal. He’s so clutch, the Mariners moved up his scheduled start by a day so he could take the mound against the Padres. The Ms wanted Bryan to slam the door on the series by securing a sweep.
And he did. With Cal behind the plate, Bryan mowed down the Padres through seven innings with just 87 pitches. We watched from the shady upper decks as the Mariners won their most impressive series of the year and I hoped that I was watching a promising player, and team, round into playoff form.
⚾ 🔱
Yes, as in Eddie Vedder, lead singer of grunge rock band Pearl Jam. There is apparently some kind of battle over who can claim him? Because Eddie lived in San Diego with the man he later learned wasn’t his real father, traumatizing him since his biological father had already died and the fact that it was kept secret prevented him from ever forming a real connection. Which he immortalized in the song “Alive,” to be found on the album Ten, by his band, Pearl Jam. When I say Pearl Jam, what city do you think of? Yeah.
Basically, in 1997 MLB Commissioner Bud Selig allowed for inter-league play, which meant lots of natural geographic rivals got to play one another, even though they were in different divisions (like the San Francisco Giants and the then-Oakland Athletics). Two teams left scrambling for a rival: the Seattle Mariners and the San Diego Padres. MLB was going to make them play, so sportswriters dug around for something to center a “rivalry” around (that’s definitely how that works, right?). And they landed on… Eddie Vedder. This year, they made it officially official, even debuting a trophy, designed by Eddie himself (who has given the series his blessing).
As if this isn’t already ridiculous enough, here’s the thing: Eddie Vedder is a massive, massive, life-long Cubs fan. He was born in Chicago and lived there again, briefly, as a young man. He’s thrown out the first pitch, belted “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the World Series, and wrote an original song to celebrate his beloved Cubbies. He even knocked a White Sox Cy Young-winning pitcher unconscious in a drunken bar fight! On the Baseball Bar-B-Cast, Yahoo! Sports reporter Jake Mintz said the rivalry has “loser energy” and I have to agree.
Also? I love that Seattle has grunge and we’ll always be proud of that, as we should be. But trying to brand a new rivalry between two ball clubs in the 21st century cannot mean digging into the 1990s archives. No one on the Mariners knew who Eddie Vedder was, or could identify any Pearl Jam songs—except the resident geriatric, Mitch Garver, who is 34 and outside of catching for George Kirby should not be on this team!!! This rivalry is dumb but I am so glad we got this trophy lol
The classes gave a 17-year-old Julio Rodriguez the confidence to give his first interview entirely in English. He was so proud, he called his parents to tell them.