Julio Rodriguez is on a Roll for Seattle Mariners
The Seattle Mariners have experienced some good and bad on their pre-All-Star break road trip. They started the trip with three consecutive wins and have dropped two straight since. A healthy mix of the positive and the negative.
Among the chaos that is Seattle, it seems that the team's franchise player and star center fielder Julio Rodriguez has finally started to hit his stride.
Rodriguez is 12-for-19 on the Mariners' road trip with a pair of home runs, a pair of doubles and five RBIs. He's batting .457 for the month of July.
Rodriguez entered the road trip with a .247 average on the year. He's bumped that up to a .267 clip since.
Julio Rodriguez over his last 7 games:
— Kirk Snyder (@dynastyinfo411) July 13, 2024
.542 AVG
3 HR
5 RBI
7 Runs
1 SBpic.twitter.com/3x540j9MqB
And the crazy part is that several people saw this coming.
According to an article from the Seattle Times' Adam Jude on July 2, Rodriguez's personal hitting coach Ovi Diaz said that the two were "close" to making a breakthrough. Diaz offered some more insight on what was hindering the two-time All-Star that Jude referred to in the article:
They realize now that Rodriguez is too upright in his stance, and he’s not using his legs enough. Getting his legs reengaged, they hope, will help him get on time for fastballs.
Whether it was that specific piece of advice, something else or a combination of multiple things — it's clearly working.
On top of Rodriguez's stellar July, he also moved to the top of the league in another impressive category.
Seattle's de facto face of the franchise had an RBI single in Saturday's 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Angels. Per the Twitter account Inside Edge (@IE_MLB), it was the 164th fastball since last season that Rodriguez put in play with an exit velocity of over 100 miles per hour — the most in the league during that span.
The Mariners haven't had the last month and a half they expected to before the All-Star break. If nothing else, at least their franchise star seems to have figured things out.
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