SEATTLE -- Bryan Woo had a full week to simmer about being battered in Baltimore, but he also knew he’d get the chance to redeem himself against the same lineup his next time out.
The Mariners’ electric right-hander could not have rebounded in a more emphatic way, with an emotional lift from the new cleats gifted from patients at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
“I don't think I've ever felt more fulfilled as a baseball player than I did after that meeting yesterday,” Woo said, referencing a visit from two of the roughly dozen children who painted the artistic footwear. “Just the fact that you have the opportunity and the platform to impact lives like that.”
That gathering with Charlotte Malone, 11, and Cooper Anderson, 12, and their families brought Woo to tears. But more so, it gave him perspective that, “Hey, maybe one bad outing isn't the worst thing in the world.”
In a rematch with the Orioles on Thursday, Woo twirled seven shutout innings with nine strikeouts to lift the Mariners to a 3-0 victory that clinched their first series win in almost two weeks. It was the first time all season that the Orioles have been held scoreless.
He was economical with his pitch count, diverse with his five-pitch mix -- and buoyed by a three-spot from the Mariners’ offense in the first inning.
Each of those factors allowed him to cruise into the eighth inning for just the second time in his career, the other being a July 10, 2025, outing when he lost a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium.
“There was no question about wanting him to go as deep as he could,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said, “because he just had great stuff.”
The nine punchouts will rightfully headline his performance, but it was more what preceded strike three that stood out -- especially on the heels of last Thursday’s outing in Baltimore, where he coughed up a career-high six runs in the third inning, with nearly all of that damage coming in hitter’s counts.
Woo threw first-pitch strikes to 16 of his 25 batters on Thursday, and only fell into a 2-0 count thrice. Of the 10 times he fell into a three-ball count, he was able to work out of it until his final batter of the 25 he faced.
His first walk of the day came to Colton Cowser in the eighth, which brought the tying run to the plate -- after Woo surrendered a leadoff single to Leody Taveras -- and pushed Wilson to pivot to Eduard Bazardo. Though it was a frustrating finish, at least by Woo’s standards, he walked off to a roaring ovation.
More illuminating, he was far less critical of himself postgame -- which hasn’t been the case throughout 2026, even after wins. And it was impossible not to draw a correlation to his demeanor and the emotional experience he went through the day prior.
“You get caught up in your own crap -- good, bad, whatever, how the team's doing, how you feel -- but stuff like that just gives you a whole different perspective on what's really important,” Woo said. “How you can still have a positive impact on people around you, even when you don't really know it, you don't know the people or you've never met them, or whatever it is.
“Even after an outing like today, or any good outing, you never think that it's going to give you this feeling of fulfillment or purpose.”
As for the cleats, Woo said they began to fray as the outing progressed. He’d like to keep wearing them but also wants to keep them intact, at the very least, as a keepsake. He also has two more that the Seattle Children’s patients designed, which he also intends to wear.
But the footwear is merely the tangible part of the experience. The meeting itself, the reactions it elicited from the patients and the touching strings it tugged at within Woo are what will last for a lifetime.