SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. \u2014 For the first time in three years, a former Cal Poly baseball player has competed in a Major League playoff game.<\/p>\n
Bryan Woo tossed two innings for the Seattle Mariners on Friday afternoon at T-Mobile Park in relief against the Toronto Blue Jays, becoming the first ex-Mustang in a playoff game since another Mariner, outfielder Mitch Haniger, made a postseason appearance in the 2022 American League playoffs.<\/p>\n
Haniger started two games for the Mariners in the wild-card round against Toronto and three more in the divisional round versus the Houston Astros.<\/p>\n
Woo, the first former Mustang to pitch in a playoff game since Justin Bruihl appeared in three relief appearances for the Los Angeles Dodgers against Atlanta in the 2021 National League Championship Series, allowed a run and two hits during his two innings Friday with one walk and no strikeouts.<\/p>\n
Seattle\u2019s third pitcher of the game, Woo worked through the sixth and seventh innings, giving up a tie-breaking run in the sixth on a line-drive single by Toronto\u2019s Ernie Clement. Toronto also loaded the bases with one out in the seventh, but a grounder to third base and a comebacker ended the threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was awesome to just get back out there,\u201d Woo told sports reporter Tim Booth of the Seattle Times. \u201cAnd, yeah, the ovation from the fans was pretty special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seattle scored five times in the eighth inning to overcome a 2-1 deficit en route to a 6-2 victory. Cal Raleigh\u2019s solo blast tied the game at 2-2 and Eugenio Suarez hit his second home run of the game, a grand slam to right field, to break the game open.<\/p>\n
Making the first relief appearance of his Major League career, Woo was sidelined four weeks with a strained pectoral muscle which occurred in a game Sept. 19 at Houston. Woo was not on the Mariners\u2019 roster in their divisional series against the Detroit Tigers as he continued his recovery from the injury.<\/p>\n
Woo\u2019s last relief appearance at any level was at Cal Poly in April 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cFelt great. Stuff felt good. Ball was coming out well, velo was good,\u201d Woo said. \u201cObviously, my first inning didn\u2019t execute the way I wanted to, and it is what it is. But, yeah, just good to get back up there.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 30 regular season starts, Woo was 15-7 with a 2.94 ERA. He was named to the American League All-Star team for the first time.<\/p>\n
Seattle needs one more win Sunday or Monday against Toronto to make its first-ever World Series appearance.\u00a0 The only ex-Mustang to appear in a World Series game was Ozzie Smith, the last time in 1987. He also played in the World Series for St. Louis in 1985 and 1982.<\/p>\n
Woo hopes to be able to rebound quickly enough to be an option in the remaining games of the ALCS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. \u2014 For the first time in three years, a former Cal Poly baseball player…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-233490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}