Julio Rodriguez Is Fucking Awesome
Few players have had the kind of impact on their franchises right away quite like Julio Rodriguez. He was one of baseball's top prospects before making the team out of spring training in 2022, and he became a franchise player right away. The last time the Seattle Mariners made the postseason without Julio Rodriguez on the roster was 2001. He ran away with the Rookie of the Year award a season ago, making his first All-Star team in the process.
Expectations were high for his sophomore campaign, and for a large majority of it, he looked a little bit off. Don't get me wrong, Julio Rodriguez will be an absolute star. Amazingly, he's still only 22 years old, but the power numbers were way down, which is surprising because the dude has a mad pop. Have you seen this guy in the Home Run Derby? He's put on an absolute show in back-to-back years.
I don't know of that many people that had any real concern about Julio Rodriguez this year. The numbers weren't as good, but the peripherals were excellent, and he's an elite defender in center with a glove. But offensively, he'd just been so-so. That changed in this most recent series against Kansas City. I could joke here and make the claim that if you want to turn your season around, all you have to do is face Kansas City Royals pitching, but I'm not going to do that. This onslaught by Julio Rodriguez was inevitable. He just picked the Royals to be the victims this time.
The series as a whole was impressive enough, but Rodriguez's last two days have been as impressive as any we've seen from a baseball player in 2023 whose name isn't Shohei Ohtani. In eleven at-bats in his last two games, he's collected nine hits. He followed up a four-hit game yesterday with a five-hit game today. He's the first player in Major League history to collect nine hits in two days. It's safe to say whatever concerns people may have had have probably gone to the wayside.
J-Rod finding his power stroke again and seeing the ball way better is huge. Things are lining up for the Mariners right now. They have a really good rotation. They've been lacking thump in the middle of their lineup. I don't believe that they have enough to make a World Series run, but if Julio Rodriguez can return to form, and by all accounts, he has, the Mariners once again become a very dangerous team. They continue to trend upward. It just goes to show how talented of a player J-Rod is that he'll have, by his standards, a relatively average first half, and yet he'll still likely finish with a 5 WAR season. He's a generational player, and he's not going anywhere.