Julio Rodríguez’s Hit Parade Helps Mariners March Into Playoff Position

You could be forgiven for viewing Julio Rodríguez’s follow-up to last year’s AL Rookie of the Year season as something of a disappointment — the numbers certainly bear that out. Even so, the 22-year-old center fielder had already appeared to turn a corner this month before going on a hitting binge for the ages. Over a four-game span from Wednesday through Saturday, Rodríguez collected 17 hits, a major league record. Those hits were hardly afterthoughts, as they helped the Mariners extend their latest winning streak to six games, a run that’s pushed them into a Wild Card spot.

Rodríguez began his jag by going 4-for-6 in Wednesday’s 6-5 win over the Royals. He led off the game with a double off James McArthur, sparking a three-run first inning, and added RBI singles in the second and ninth innings. Then he went 5-for-5 in Thursday’s 6-4 win against the Royals, driving in five runs via an RBI single off Angel Zerpa, an RBI double off Max Castillo, and a three-run eighth-inning homer off Carlos Hernández that turned a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 lead. He added a solo home run on Friday off the Astros’ J.P. France in a 2-0 win, and then went 4-for-6 in a 10-3 rout of Houston on Saturday, coming around to score on two of his four singles.

The five-hit game was the first of Rodríguez’s career, while the three four-hit games surpassed last year’s full-season total of two. His four-game total topped a record that was nearly a century old:

Rodríguez joined Stock — a solid but mostly obscure infielder whose 12-year major league career would end less than a year after his streak and a 202-hit season — as the only players to string together four straight games with at least four hits. As was pointed out on social media, Rodríguez’s 17 hits over those four games matched the total for the entire Yankees team in their four losses to the Braves and Red Sox from August 15-19, a sequence that pretty much sealed their fate in the AL Wild Card race; if you want more salt to rub in New York’s wounds, note that Rodríguez outscored the hapless Yankees (5-4) as well.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said manager Scott Servais on Saturday. “Nobody in the history of Major League Baseball has seen anything like it. But what can you say? Julio is just smoking hot right now.”

Rodríguez also collected hits on Tuesday against the Royals and Sunday against the Astros; by either measure, his 18 hits over a five-game span is tied for second all-time:

In all, Rodríguez has now hit in eight consecutive games. Even before this streak, he had put up a 132 wRC+ in the month since the All-Star break, and had collected multiple hits in six of his previous 13 games. Now, his August is off the charts:

Only five players have outhit Rodríguez in August, namely Mookie Betts (236 wRC+), Zack Gelof (225), Corey Seager (216), Kerry Carpenter (210), and Brandon Belt (209), while only Bobby Witt Jr. (1.7 WAR) and Betts (1.6) have equaled or surpassed Rodríguez’s 1.6 WAR for the month.

Rodríguez recently tweaked his swing. Via MLB.com’s Daniel Kramer:

A contributing cause [for his hot streak]? A recent mechanical adjustment through consultation with Mariners hitting coach and director of hitting strategy Jarret DeHart, who noted that Rodríguez has a wider stance and stronger base to start. This creates more load from the bottom up and eliminates unnecessary movements en route to reaching his hitting position.

…“It simplifies things,” Rodríguez said of the adjustment. “Basically, your eyes are a little more clear. … It feels like you did everything you could to put yourself in that position and just kind of trust it. Once you step to the plate, you’re trusting that you’re going to get the job done.”

The result has been that he’s hitting the ball harder, mainly to his pull side:

Note that in both periods, his groundball rate and groundball-to-fly ball ratio are higher than last year’s numbers (46% and 1.29, respectively), and likewise, his average launch angle in both periods is below last year’s 10.1 degrees. He’s been killing a whole lot of worms, but sometimes he’s hitting the ball hard enough on the ground to be productive. To wit, where he had collected infield hits on 10.7% of his groundballs before this month, he’s doubled that to 21.4% in August; five of the 17 hits over those four games didn’t leave the dirt. And while it’s not shown in the numbers above, he hasn’t hit an infield fly ball since June 17.

You can see the impact of that improved pull rate on Rodríguez’s Statcast expected stats:

Also note that his expected numbers are actually as good or better than last year, when he hit for a 146 wRC+ and was the toast of the baseball world. He outdid those expected numbers in 2022 but in the grand scheme, they’ve evened out this year. It’s funny how that works.

Rodríguez’s hot streak couldn’t have come at a much better time, as he’s helped to power the Mariners to the AL’s best record in August (14-4, .777), and for that matter in the second half as well (24-11, .686). Here’s a look at what that’s done to their playoff odds:

Among AL teams, only Minnesota has increased its odds by a higher percentage (36.9%, from 57.6% to 95.4%) in the second half, but even before that jump, they were already more likely than not to be playing in October, unlike Seattle. Bearing the biggest brunt of the Mariners’ increase — or more to the point, contributing the most to their rise — are the Yankees, who by going 11-22 in the second half (and 5-13 in August) have fallen from 56.2% to 0.4%.

Rodríguez isn’t doing all of this alone, of course. The team has outscored opponents by 36 runs in 35 second-half games, with an offense that’s averaging 4.97 runs per game and a pitching staff that’s surrendering just 3.94 runs per game. On the offensive side, the team entered Sunday having hit for a 123 wRC+ since the break, compared to 99 prior, with every lineup regular save for Teoscar Hernández and platoon DH Mike Ford improving his wRC+:

Marlowe has done an admirable job of filling in for the injured Kelenic (who broke his left foot kicking a water cooler on July 19), and even second base, where Wong made the Replacement Level Killers list, has improved thanks to the trade of Paul Sewald to the Diamondbacks. Rojas, who arrived from Arizona in that four-player swap, hasn’t done much, but even his contributions and the spotwork of Caballero and Moore have raised the bar a little after Wong was DFA’d on August 1. Caballero and Moore have lately been filling in for Crawford, who had been the hottest regular in the second half before landing on the seven-day concussion injured list due to a collision with Suárez on August 10; after a rehab game with High-A Everett on Saturday, he’ll rejoin the Mariners for their series against the White Sox and could be activated later today.

On the other side of the ball, the story is about the bullpen, which has suddenly become very stingy thanks to more missed bats:

The trade of Sewald raised some eyebrows — why would a team that pictured itself as a contender deal its popular closer? — but so far, general manager Jerry Dipoto’s confidence in Seattle’s other relievers has paid off. We’re dealing with small samples here, but of the six relievers to throw at least 10 innings in the second half, the highest ERA belongs to Matt Brash (3.18), with Justin Topa, Tayler Saucedo and Gabe Speier all at 1.50 or below. Likewise the highest FIP from that group belongs to Isaiah Campbell (3.95) with Brash, Topa, Saucedo and Speier all at 2.60 or below. Servais has taken a committee approach to the ninth inning, with Andrés Muñoz converting six out of eight save chances, Brash three out of four, and three others notching a single save.

Meanwhile, it rates as somewhat surprising that a rotation with the AL’s fifth-best ERA and third-best FIP overall (both at 3.87 entering Sunday) has been so blah during this surge, but George Kirby is the only one who’s been better than league average in both ERA and FIP (3.56 and 3.15, respectively) in the second half, with Luis Castillo and Logan Gilbert more or less average, Bryce Miller showing some progress (3.49 ERA, 4.56 FIP), and the fifth starter spot pitching like fifth starters. (Lately that’s been Emerson Hancock, though he strained a lat on Sunday and could land on the IL, scuttling plans for a six-man rotation just as Bryan Woo nears a return from forearm inflammation that sidelined him earlier this month.) That said, the group has been stingier lately, highlighted by Kirby allowing two runs across a three-start, 21-inning span, and Miller allowing just three runs in 17 innings over his last three starts.

By sweeping the Astros this weekend, the Mariners pulled to within half a game of second place in the AL West, and within three games of the division-leading Rangers. They’ll have the benefit of a soft schedule over the next couple of weeks, with series against the White Sox, Royals, A’s and Mets — four teams that are a combined 137 games below .500 — upcoming. They’re hardly guaranteed a playoff spot, as the Blue Jays are just half a game behind them, but suddenly this season is looking a lot sunnier for Seattle.