The Metronomic Bryan Woo

Bryan Woo is due to start this evening against the Athletics in Seattle. I expect he’ll go six innings. Why? Because he’s gone at least six innings in all 24 of his starts this season. Woo’s streak, as you’ve probably guessed, is the longest in baseball by some distance. Only two other active pitchers — Cristopher Sánchez and Spencer Schwellenbach — have gone six or more in their 10 most recent starts. (Schwellenbach will keep that streak going through the end of the year, having fractured his elbow in June.)

The fact that Woo has completed six innings every time he’s taken the mound this year is self-evident proof that he’s been consistent. But at the same time, this yearlong run of metronomity has not been interrupted by bursts of transcendence. He’s only recorded one out in the eighth inning all season. He hasn’t posted back-to-back scoreless starts since June of last year, and he’s still looking for the first double-digit strikeout game of his entire major league career.

On April 12, Woo allowed one run across seven innings in a 9-2 win over the Rangers, lowering his ERA to 2.84. Ever since then, his ERA has always been within half a run in either direction of 3.00. It hasn’t been more than a quarter of a run from 3.00 since the second week of June. The man is a machine.

The other day, Meg came to me asking if I’d meant to describe Logan Webb as one of “the most pitchers in the NL.” Clearly not; I’d intended to describe him as “most consistent” and didn’t stop to drop in the adjective. But that got me thinking about who the “most pitcher” in baseball is, and it might be Woo.

Woo throws five pitches, and unlike some other guys with deep repertoires, he throws all of them to hitters on both sides of the plate at least semi-regularly. (He might not get a right-on-right changeup into every start, but it’s not unheard of.)

He’s got the best command of any qualified starter, according to PitchingBot (Webb is actually close behind), and he works in the zone (58.1% of the time, according to Statcast) more than any qualified starter except Jake Irvin. And a lot of those strikes are in the middle of the plate; Woo has thrown 31.0% of his pitches in Statcast’s heart zone, which ranks 16th out of 161 players with 1,000 or more total pitches this season.

He’s not exceptional there, on the aggregate. He’s about average at generating swings and misses and suppressing wOBA on contact made over the heart of the plate. (In fact, in that latter category he’s third among starters whose last names start with “Woo,” after Brandon Woodruff and Simeon Woods Richardson.)

But the variety of stuff Woo throws has, somewhat paradoxically, turned his fastball into one of the best in the league. There’s nothing remarkable about its velocity or movement, but opponents are hitting .147 with a 29.5% whiff rate against his four-seamer, and in terms of aggregate run value, it’s been one of the best pitches in all of baseball.

Woo doesn’t have electric breaking stuff or outlier fastball velocity, but he doesn’t walk anybody and makes hitters beat him. Which happens. Woo has allowed 10 batted balls with an exit velo of 110 mph or greater this year, which is one of the 20 highest totals in the majors. He has also allowed 22 home runs, which ties him for 14th in the league.

But 18 of those home runs were solo shots. That’s because Woo has thrown 67.8% of his pitches this year with the bases empty. That’s the eighth-highest percentage out of 161 starters who have thrown 1,000 or more pitches this year.

He’s also been better — a lot better — on those rare occasions when he has men on base or in scoring position. Woo has a .202 opponent wOBA with runners in scoring position, which is the sixth-best mark out of that group of starters, and 72 points better than his wOBA with the bases empty. If you keep the bases clear and bear down when someone does get on, a home run goes from a catastrophe to an annoyance, and it’s easier to go deep in games.

It also helps to be efficient. Last year, Woo led the league (among pitchers with 100 or more innings) in both overall strike percentage and first-pitch strike percentage. He was the only starter in the majors to throw more than 70% of his pitches for strikes (including called and swinging).

He’s actually taken his foot off the gas a little in terms of pounding the zone this year.

But in terms of overall efficiency, Woo remains among the league leaders. Here you’ll find the 10 starting pitchers who have thrown the fewest pitches per plate appearance.

You’ll notice that the quality of pitchers here is all over the map. Actually, I take that back. There are seven good pitchers here and three Rockies. Because sometimes a first-pitch strike at Coors Field turns into a 440-foot homer.

Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning that there are a ton of good pitchers who are among the league leaders in pitches per plate appearance. Freddy Peralta is throwing 4.22 pitches per plate appearance; that’s an extra seven-tenths of a pitch to every batter than Freeland throws. Zack Wheeler, MacKenzie Gore, Hunter Brown, and Logan Gilbert are no. 6 through no. 10 on the most-pitches-per-batter leaderboard. Paul Skenes is 12th.

But guys who go deep every game tend to throw fewer pitches per plate appearance. In addition to Woo, Sánchez and Schwellenbach — the other two active starters with a 10-game streak of making it through the sixth inning — are in the top 10 in efficiency on a per-batter basis.

If you change the denominator from per batter to per inning, however, you get a much, much stronger correlation with pitcher quality. Which makes sense; the number of pitches a pitcher throws per inning is more a function of allowing fewer baserunners than throwing more strikes.

I’ve highlighted Schwellenbach in brown, Woo in gold, and Sánchez in red. Those three are no. 1, no. 2, and no. 4 in fewest pitches per inning. Zack Littell, the league leader in solo home runs allowed, is the only pitcher to break up that group.

Complaints about how pitchers never go deep into games anymore have grown a bit tiresome. It’s a different game now than it was back in the 1960s, or even the 1990s. You can’t just pound the zone with a mid-90s fastball all the live long day and expect to get through six or seven innings every time out.

Well, “you” can’t, but Woo can. Maybe he’s got a time machine. Granted, he’s not Nolan Ryaning his way through 180 pitches a start — Woo has hit the 100-pitch mark only three times in his entire career, and has never gone over 103 — but when a fastball in the zone is an out pitch, the rest of the puzzle solves itself.