Julio Rodríguez Got Back on Course

Julio Rodriguez
Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

After breaking their long postseason drought last year, the Mariners entered 2023 with some lofty expectations led by Julio Rodríguez, the AL Rookie of the Year, and a cadre of young pitchers. Seattle got off to a slow start in April, limping to a 12–16 record during the first month of the season. Things got a little better in May, but the team really turned on the jets over the last week and half, cruising through a 7–3 homestand that pushed its record to 29–27.

The real story of the week was Rodríguez, who earned American League Player of the Week honors by collecting 14 hits, six extra-base hits, and seven RBIs. He added another four hits and a home run against the Yankees earlier this week, raising his wRC+ from 86 to 111 in the span of these ten games.

Even though the Mariners have one of the best pitching staffs in the majors and a top-tier defense, the ongoing struggles of their offense have held them back to start this season. They’ve scored 4.45 runs per game thus far with a team wRC+ of 97, a little below league average. The slow start from Rodríguez has been a key aspect of that lack of production, though there are other (non) contributors too. Still, it seems like as Julio goes, the Mariners go.

Rodríguez got off to a similar slow start during his rookie campaign last year: through April, he was batting just .205/.284/.260 with a 61 wRC+ and a gaudy 37.0% strikeout rate. He hit his first major league home run on May 1, though, and never looked back from there. This year, his struggles were a little more pronounced and prolonged: through May 21, he was slashing .204/.280/.376, good for an 86 wRC+ with a 28.5% strikeout rate.

It isn’t hard to see the source of Rodríguez’s problems. Prior to this homestand, he was producing a .178 wOBA against four-seam fastballs, a dramatic drop from the .409 mark he put up last year. He was able to push that up to a .334 wOBA after these last ten games, a much more palatable level of production against hard stuff. His problem with heaters didn’t necessarily stem from anything he was doing wrong; it was mostly linked to how pitchers were attacking him this season. A look at his average exit velocity by zone pretty easily reveals Rodríguez’s weakness:

If you can locate pitches on the inner half of the plate, Rodríguez has a really hard time putting hard stuff in play with his characteristic authority. He’s unable to get his arms extended as much, and the result is far more weak contact. That’s exactly how pitchers have chosen to go after him this year: Fastballs up and in to prevent him from doing damage on those pitches, followed by breaking pitches out of the zone once he falls behind in the count.

With an aggressive approach at the plate, he’ll always have a bit of swing and miss in his profile, but the book on Rodríguez exacerbated his weaknesses early this season. His overall chase rate is slightly elevated, the result of a 38.1% chase rate in two-strike counts, a three-point increase over last year.

Rodríguez has also struggled against pitches located on the edge of the zone. Last year, he was net neutral on swings and takes in the Statcast defined shadow zone, straddling the rule book strike zone. This year, he’s lost eight runs on poor swing decisions in that zone, mostly stemming from an increase in swing rate on pitches located there.

So what changed in his approach during this homestand? In short: he got a lot more aggressive.

Julio Rodríguez, Plate Discipline
Timeperiod Swing% O-Swing% Contact% Z-Contact% SwStr%
2022 50.2% 33.0% 71.1% 81.2% 14.4%
Before May 22 50.5% 34.5% 71.2% 82.4% 14.2%
After May 22 62.2% 45.1% 74.7% 83.9% 15.6%

It’s a tiny sample of 44 plate appearances, but his swing rate went through the roof along with his chase rate and swinging-strike rate, and he managed more contact despite it all. Nearly 70% of the balls Rodríguez put in play over the last ten games have been hit hard, including nine off four-seam fastballs that resulted in eight hits. Eight of the batted balls he put in play off a four-seamer came within the first two pitches of the at-bat. He was aggressively hunting fastballs early in the count before the pitcher was able to start to work against his weaknesses.

Here’s a perfect example of how he started to counter the book on him last week:

With two men on in the second inning and ahead in the count 0–1, Vince Velasquez tried to bust Rodríguez up and in with a hard fastball. He shortened his swing, got inside and out in front of the pitch, and launched a 109-mph missile into the left-center gap. Velasquez tried to sneak a fastball by in the first pitch of this at-bat, and Rodríguez just barely missed it, fouling it straight back instead. He didn’t miss his second chance.

The other problem that was causing issues for Rodríguez was related to his contact quality. It’s a subtle issue that’s hidden by his outstanding overall batted ball quality. His hard-hit and barrel rates are within spitting distance of the norms he set last year, and his exit velocities are slightly higher this season.

Julio Rodríguez, Batted Ball Peripherals
Year EV FB+LD EV Barrel% Hard Hit% GB% ISO wRC+
2022 92.0 96.2 13.1% 50.7% 46.0% 0.225 146
2023 93.1 96.2 10.8% 53.5% 42.7% 0.196 111

Even though his overall groundball rate is down from last year, the concern stems from what happens when he pulls his batted balls. Nearly 60% of his pulled contact has been put on the ground this year. He already had a high rate of pulled groundball contact last year, and now it’s even higher.

Much of Rodríguez’s power is up the middle and to the opposite field, so it wasn’t that much of an issue last year, but the problem has become worrisome. His swing path leads to a lot of pulled contact on the ground, and now that pitchers are trying to locate in on his hands more often, he’s only compounding things by rolling over everything when he tries to pull the ball. The good news is that just four of his 11 pulled batted balls over the last ten games were put on the ground, and all of them were hard-hit. This will be something that he’ll simply need to manage as he continues to adjust back to the league.

The extremely aggressive approach that Rodríguez used to break out of his early slump isn’t sustainable. No one is able to survive in this league with a swing rate north of 60%, even if they’re making all sorts of loud contact. It was a great way to fight the formula pitchers were using to exploit his weaknesses, but he’ll need to find a happy medium between aggressively hunting fastballs and a balanced approach geared toward punishing mistakes. It’s a good sign that he’s recognized the patterns pitchers were using to try to get him out, and he made some necessary adjustments over the last ten days. The next challenge is to continue hone his approach so that he doesn’t become too one-dimensional.





Jake Mailhot is a contributor to FanGraphs. A long-suffering Mariners fan, he also writes about them for Lookout Landing. Follow him on Twitter @jakemailhot.

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LaBellaVitamember
9 months ago

If we ignore a tiny sample size and look at the entire season:

xwOBA / wOBA / wRC+
2022: .337 / .366 / 146
2023: .344 / .322 / 109

Is it a change in the approach, or is it randomness in the outcome?