The question has come up a few times among us Seattle sports scribes: If you were to take any active athlete from one of this town’s teams and place them on a random street corner, who would be the most recognizable?
The consensus answer is one Julio Rodríguez, and for good reason.
This is the man who ran away with American League Rookie of the Year honors in 2022, the same year he socked 81 dingers in the Home Run Derby. It’s the guy who finished fourth in AL MVP voting in 2023, when his second half nearly put the Mariners in the playoffs.
But it’s also the player whose slow starts have plagued him in all three of his seasons in Seattle — a player whose production has incrementally dropped in those seasons, too.
The truth is, if Rodríguez played up to expectations last season — instead of posting a 4.3 WAR that was 1.9 points lower than his rookie year and 1.2 points lower than his sophomore season — Seattle could have gotten back to the postseason. But he didn’t. And it’s fair to ask whether the center fielder will return to the form that dazzled MLB in his first two years, or whether MLB has figured him out.
First, the good news. Rodríguez always finishes conspicuously better than when he starts. On July 3 of last season, for instance, J-Rod’s OPS dipped to .616 after going 6 for his last 52. At that point, he might have missed the All-Star Game if there were 60 players on each roster. But as per usual, he surged in the second half and watched that OPS improve to .734 by year’s end.
It was still Julio’s worst offensive season by far. However, the climb back to respectability signaled that he had not been solved by MLB’s pitchers — that he had the ability to adjust. It just came far too late.
For too long, he was swinging at just about anything that came his way. His chase rate was among the worst in MLB at the midway point last season, and his power numbers were MIA.
Sometimes it can be a curse to be among the most naturally gifted players of your generation. You might feel like your instincts are enough to overcome your shortcomings — or you might feel the pressure to rescue your team every time you step in the batter’s box.
But eventually Rodríguez settled down and reminded the league why he earned a contract guaranteeing him more than $200 million. Perhaps that’s why FanGraphs projects Rodríguez to have a WAR of 6.2 this season — the best of his career by that site’s metric.
Some will note that Rodríguez’s late-season surge took place after the M’s fired hitting coach Jarret DeHart in late August, but his numbers were beginning to rise before that ouster. It’s understandable for Mariners fans to be excited about Edgar Martinez taking on the role of senior director of hitting strategy, but as I’ve said before, if hitting coaches were responsible for major statistical improvements team-wide, they would be worth tens of millions of dollars per year. They aren’t.
Coaching might help Rodríguez some, but this year is going to come down to what he’s learned after his first three seasons. The Mariners aren’t paying him to be good, they’re paying him to be elite. He can’t wait until June or July to do that this year.
No doubt that the (relatively) cold Seattle weather in the spring can affect production. That, along with the pitcher-friendly atmosphere that is T-Mobile Park, likely deters potential free agents. But it’s not like there haven’t been Mariners who have excelled at home in the early months. Julio has shown he is a complete player. What he hasn’t done is put together a complete season.
Baseball isn’t a sport in which you can rely on one man to take you to a championship. Just look at all those years the Angels had Shohei Ohtani and/or a healthy Mike Trout, only to regularly fall short of a postseason berth. But the Mariners haven’t been missing the playoffs by 10 games. They’ve been right on the cusp the past two seasons.
If Rodríguez finds a way to go from star to superstar — something this team and league has been waiting for — the playoffs await.