Seattle Mariners' Bryan Woo Has Critical Test in Injury Recovery Coming

Seattle Mariners rookie right-hander Bryan Woo will take a big step in his injury recovery on Thursday afternoon as he looks to work his way back to the rotation.

The following update comes from the Rotowire fantasy baseball portal:

Woo (forearm) is slated to throw a 30-pitch bullpen session ahead of Thursday's series finale against the Royals, the team's official site reports.

ANALYSIS
The Mariners will assess Woo's progress once they have a chance to observe how he recovers from the session. The forearm swelling Woo was experiencing has mostly subsided and he's been playing catch in recent days, so he remains optimistic of potentially being able to return from the injured list when first eligible Sunday.

Getting Woo back would be big news for the Mariners, who are rolling with multiple rookie starting pitchers this season. Having Woo back would allow the team to go with a six-man rotation that could limit the innings on Woo, Bryce Miller and Emerson Hancock. Woo threw just 57 professional innings a season ago and has already thrown 99 this season.

He's 1-3 with a 4.75 ERA and has struck out 60 batters in 55.0 innings at the major league level.

The Mariners beat the Royals on Wednesday night by a score of 6-5 to get back to 64-55 on the season. They are 1.0 game back in the chase for the third and final wild card spot in the American League.

They'll wrap up the series with Kansas City on Thursday at 2:10 p.m. ET.