Bryan Woo came to the ballpark seemingly on a mission today: to make the Rangers\u2019 day miserable. So far this season, despite some solid performances, Woo has failed to notch a win, with three no-decisions and two losses. Today, he stepped on the hill, and, one inning aside, he looked as sharp as he has all season. While Woo certainly has the ability to flex his power, show off with a 97 mph fastball right at the numbers, today was all about keeping everyone off balance and dominating with soft contact, jam shots, and precision control. After the game, Dan Wilson commented on Woo\u2019s mindset today:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think from pitch one you could see a little more determination on his face today, and wanting to really go out this afternoon and give us a good ballgame.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woo echoed much of the same sentiment:<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing in the zone consistently, throughout the game, and not fishing for punchouts, just consistency in the zone and executing. And if they\u2019re punchouts, if they\u2019re quick outs, whatever they are, just take them as they come.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mindset showed as Woo used his fastballs to extreme effectiveness today, keeping the Rangers off balance and using his sinker to elicit weak contact and befuddled swings. Woo did an excellent job of keeping the ball in the infield as well, bringing about six ground balls and three infield fly balls to go against two hits from the Rangers today. Woo was near perfect in preventing free passes as well, issuing his only walk of the game to Corey Seager in the 7th inning (thanks partially to a savvy challenge from Mitch Garver in the first that flipped Seager\u2019s first at-bat around from a 3-0 to a 2-1 count and eventual popout). Otherwise, Woo was playing in the zone all day, keeping hitters honest and tallying six strikeouts along the way.<\/p>\n
The Rangers began to figure Woo out around the third time through the order, as a poorly timed walk to Seager to lead off the seventh, followed by a single Wyatt Langford and an HBP to Joc Pederson, loaded the bases. Josh Jung nearly got a hold of one but drove it out to the wall for a sacrifice fly as Seager ran in to score. A double from Evan Carter would bring home Langford and give the Rangers two runs off of Woo. Josh Smith would end the inning with a soft grounder to second, but the damage had been done, and Woo\u2019s day came to a close at 7 innings pitched, 2 ER, 1 walk, and 6 Ks.<\/p>\n
Despite the strong six innings, Woo struggled to hide his frustration with his difficulties in the 7th. But he remained calm, limited the damage, and finished the inning. Even so, Woo was very critical of the free pass and the HBP, expressing so after the game:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe leadoff walk, number one. Hitting Joc, stupid. But it\u2019s just the concept of keeping teams down when they\u2019re down, not giving them any life, not letting them have any momentum, not letting them breathe in any way, just keeping our foot on the gas. You give up the two there and then it\u2019s like, the at-bats for Gabe the next inning are just more stressful. And there\u2019s no need for that if I just do my job. Yeah. I\u2019m still beating myself up over it. It\u2019s just little things like that. It\u2019s like, if they were to hit their way through that inning it\u2019s one thing, but for me to give them free passes, that\u2019s another thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the negative self-talk, it seems to me that Woo is as locked in as he\u2019s ever been, consistently focused on improving and not letting small mistakes eat at him too much:<\/p>\n
\u201cI give myself tonight to be pissed, and then once I wake up tomorrow, it\u2019s a new day, and we get on it again\u2026I try to take the positive and analyze the negative. So yeah. Six good and one bad. Try to weigh it in that way too, proportionally, like, don\u2019t be too hard on yourself but take the good and learn from the bad, and it is what it is. Yeah, I hold high standards for myself but there\u2019s a balance there too of not being too hard on yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mariners\u2019 offense also put on a mighty display today to follow up on their strong performance from last night. Rob Refsnyder got the scoring started today with his first hit as a Mariner, a lead-off homerun off the first pitch of the day from MacKenzie Gore. Having just returned from paternity leave, it seems dad power is back on the menu!<\/p>\n
Refsnyder spoke after the game on his struggles getting started here in Seattle:<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel thankful for my teammates, trying to help me through. I don\u2019t think you ever want to slump, especially early in the year, new team, new city, so I\u2019ve definitely been hard on myself, but I\u2019ve had a lot of help. Our mental coach, Bern [Adam Bernero] has helped me a lot\u2026And especially as a platoon guy, it kind of stinks because you have a couple of days to sit on it, too. But the most frustrating thing is that we feel like we\u2019re playing decent baseball, just the results as a whole haven\u2019t been exactly where we want it to be, but it\u2019s a good group, and we honestly believe in each other. Hopefully this series we can kind of build on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Refsnyder has had a difficult start to the season but remains committed to taking advantage of the opportunities and expressed thanks for the fan support he has received so far despite his cold start:<\/p>\n
\u201cI really appreciate, there\u2019s been some fans out in early batting practice, even today in the outfield, who have been really supportive. That helps. Honestly, I\u2019m human, so we hear a lot of things. So just to have the fan support, it meant a lot, it\u2019s pretty cool. I\u2019ve played in some places where you get booed at home and things like that, and it definitely wears on you\u2026[The fans said] just supportive things like you got it, we believe in you, keep going, just nice stuff like that. And it means a lot when you\u2019re going through it, wondering who knows if I\u2019m ever going to get another hit. So just to have that support, honestly, it genuinely meant a lot. It was nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hopefully, today marks a turnaround moment for the journeyman outfielder and the spark for a successful run for him here in Seattle.<\/p>\n
The Mariners wouldn\u2019t end the scoring there, putting on a show of strength and power today in front of the hometown fans. In the second, a leadoff walk for Mitch Garver set up JP Crawford for a two-run home run of his own.<\/p>\n
With the swing, Crawford became the first player to get a hit off of Gore\u2019s curveball all year and the second lefty in the league with two career homeruns off of Gore (Michael Harris II being the other).<\/p>\n
Randy Arozarena followed that up with a two-run homer of his own in the 5th. A Julio Rodriguez single put him on first and in a 0-2 count against the curveball Randy hit it off the left field foul pole to put the Mariners up 5-0.<\/p>\n
The Mariners were relentless against Gore today in a way they have not been before. In the previous three games in which the Mariners faced Gore over 18 innings, they scored 1 run, struck out 25 times, and walked 3 times, a record that certainly suggests today\u2019s game should have gone differently. Today, however, the Mariners sparked Gore for 5 runs on 7 hits over 5 innings today, a marked improvement from previous outings. On top of that, as I mentioned earlier, coming into this start, Gore had not given up a hit all year on his curveball. 4 of the Mariners\u2019 8 hits came on Gore\u2019s curveball, and two of those were home runs. Whatever change was made in the clubhouse, the Mariners have finally managed to get to a guy who has seemingly had their number over the last year or so.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1oz came in and shut the door in typical fashion in the 9th to put the bow on one of the most complete Mariners games I\u2019ve seen so far this season. The Mariners have struggled in various areas so far this season – the bullpen not showing up, the starter struggling through the first 5 innings, or the offense doing their best impression of a ghost – but today the Mariners really put it all together. All the ingredients were there: a dominant start from Woo, who went on a solid run, run support from the top of the order, and the bullpen came in and shut down the game without incident. Hopefully, this is a sign that the Mariners are turning it around and maintaining the strong performances we are used to seeing from last year. There is another division-winning team here; it remains to be seen if that team can show up consistently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bryan Woo came to the ballpark seemingly on a mission today: to make the Rangers\u2019 day miserable. So…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[5,620,4,619,65,38487,77416,3235],"class_list":{"0":"post-679734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-mariners","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mariners","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-seattle","12":"tag-seattle-mariners","13":"tag-seattle-mariners-game-recaps","14":"tag-seattle-mariners-scores-standings","15":"tag-seattlemariners"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116437001136243546","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}