After moving through three levels in 2022, Bryan Woo is already up to Double-A this year.
- Born: January 30, 2000
- B/T: Right/Right
- 6’2″, 205-lbs
- Drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the 2021 MLB June Amateur Draft out of California Polytechnic University
The Numbers
His raw numbers are listed above courtesy of baseball-reference.com. Let’s aggregate by year then focus on the important numbers for minor leaguers:
Woo started his professional career facing 17 batters at Rookie ball level before baseball executives decided that was just too cruel on the batters.
So they moved him to Single A where he put up very solid numbers all around.
So they moved him to High-A where he walked a few more batters, and gave up more hits, but he struck out just about as many as usual and kept his K%-BB% rate in excellent territory.
So far in 2023, again jumping a level to Double-A, he is back to his dominating ways and the mercy rule will have to be invoked again if this keeps up.
Monthly Splits
Taking out the hits (WHIP) really changes our views of 2022, doesn’t it? In terms of raw skill, other than a slightly elevated walk rate at the higher levels, his strikeout rate was steady and good.
I skipped his one September start at High-A, in case you were comparing the two charts above.
Handedness K% and BB%
Rookie (vs RH): 64%K and 0%BB. (vs LH): 33%K and 0%BB.
Single-A (vs RH): 33%K and 7%BB. (vs LH): 36%K and 8%BB.
High-A (vs RH): 33%K and 5%BB. (vs LH): 29%K and 20%BB.
Other than a jump in walks at High-A that is out of character for Woo, this looks steady and great.
For what it’s worth, so far in 2023 in Double-A he has walked one out of 17 LHB faced, and walked one out of 13 LHB faced, so yeah, that High-A blip was just a blip.
The Scouts
- Rotowire: #264 on their Top 400
- Fantrax: Not on their Top 400
- RotoProspects: #245 on Top 500
Warnings
He’s doing great at Double-A so far, and that was the one thing we wanted to see.
He did have a slightly elevated walk rate last year. So far, so good this year, but let’s see how the season goes on.
He had Tommy John surgery in 2021 (which is why he didn’t start until 2022), and partly why we forgive some control problems in 2022.
Conclusion
He has three pitches in his arsenal:
- His four-seam fastball that sits mid-90s, has decent spin, gets whiffs.
- His mid-80s slider isn’t quite there yet, with just average spin.
- His upper-80s changeup is his least-used pitch and is just average.
As we saw late in 2022 at High-A, he can be hittable at times, even among the strikeouts. If he can get his fastball to be less flat when he throws it, he could avoid some of the hits. If his secondaries improve their quality, he could become a good mid-rotation starter.
Not the best prospect, but a good prospect off to a great start in 2023, and could be a quick mover this year.