Bryan Woo pitched six tremendous innings tonight, but baseball games last longer than that.
Despite Woo taking a no-hitter into the eighth, a 24-pitch first inning ensured that he never really stood a great chance of completing the feat, and the Yankees were ultimately able to come back against the Mariners’ three best relievers to steal the game. It completed the sweep and knocked the Mariners out of playoff position to boot.
But let’s at least talk a bit about those six great innings that Woo pitched, namely the second through the seventh. It was an impressive bounceback from that laborious first, which Woo opened by walking the first two batters he faced, something he’s never done before. It was an odd first inning, in which Woo had a little extra velocity, touching 99 (rounding up) twice, something else he’s never done before, but atypically lacking command, throwing just 11 of his 24 pitches for strikes. A strikeout of Aaron Judge and a rare double play from Cody Bellinger nonetheless allowed him to escape unscathed. From the second through the seventh, though, Woo was in a rocking chair, retiring every batter he faced.
As you’d expect for Woo, it was a fastball-forward performance, but even for him, this was otra cosa. 74% of his 103 pitches were four-seamers, something even more remarkable when you consider that the Yankees smushed six lefties and a switch-hitter into their lineup tonight. That line of thinking made some sense. In Woo’s rookie year, he had the most extreme handedness splits in baseball, and it seemed in particular that he’d need to refine his secondaries if he was going to survive against southpaws. But as we’ve seen over the course of the past year and a half, it was in fact those half-baked secondaries that were the problem, not the solution. Against tonight’s lefties, Woo was even heavier with the four-seamer, going to it 81% of the time. And it worked, picking up nine whiffs against them.
Instead, it was the right-handed Aaron Judge who saw a steady diet of secondaries, with ten sweepers out of the 14 pitches he saw. But that worked too, getting that first-inning strikeout as well as a can of corn and a soft fly ball to keep him quiet.
The pitch count was always an issue after that first inning however, so despite taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning, Woo was sitting on 92 pitches. With a career high of 100, he’d need two pretty quick innings, even if he was allowed to test new limits on his arm. Unfortunately, Jazz Chisolm, Jr. diffused the tension with a quick hit to open the inning. Dan Wilson left Woo in the game to try to record an out in the eighth for the first time in his career, which he did, though not before a run scored.
So despite opening the game with a pair of walks, those would be the only two free passes Woo allowed. He hasn’t walked three batters in a game since his rookie year. He also kept his streak of pitching at least six innings alive, recorded an out in the eighth inning for the first time, struck out his 300th career batter, and established the MLB record by opening his career at Yankee Stadium with 18.1 scoreless innings. Woo’s performance also, obviously, earns him tonight’s Sun Hat Award for making a noteworthy contribution to a Mariners game.
Woo left the game with the score 5-1 thanks mostly to a three-run dinger from Jorge Polanco. Going yard for the second night in a row brings Polanco’s wOBA up to .334 on the year. (.314 is MLB average.) Despite a fair bit of digital strum und drang over Polanco’s rough May, he’s really dug himself out of the hole again. This chart doesn’t even take into account tonight’s game.
But the bullpen could not hold the lead with Giancarlo Stanton taking Matt Brash deep in the eighth, Andrés Muñoz fighting his command in the ninth, and Gabe Speier getting squeezed by the ump in the tenth. A sac fly from Aaron Judge ended the game, though a nice throw from Julio Rodríguez made it close at the plate.
But not close enough. It wraps up a 1-5 season series against the Yankees with an extra-innings loss. This series has been a season lowlight, right up there with the sweep in Oracle Park that killed Victor Robles. This series might have killed the rest of us. Only three more games before we can stop thinking about the Mariners for a few days.