Julio Rodríguez sees quick results from work at the plate

It’s been a difficult second half of the season for the Seattle Mariners and star center fielder Julio Rodríguez.

Where Seattle Mariners’ dwindling playoff hopes stand with 15 games left

The Mariners have seen their hopes of winning a second straight American League West title and getting back to the playoffs fade to the point where only a remarkable run and a lot of help around them over the final 15 games will get them in.

And Rodríguez’s struggles over the second half of the season – a time he’s known for playing at his best – have been among the bigger reasons for the club’s disappointing closing stretch.

The last month in particular hadn’t been kind to the three-time All-Star.

In a 28-game span from Aug. 9-Sept. 9, Rodríguez slashed .162/.208/.246 with two homers, a 31.2% strikeout rate and just a 5.6% walk rate. He was the fourth-worst qualified hitter in MLB by OPS (.464), fifth-worst by wOBA (.208) and sixth-worst by wRC+ (33) over that span.

In search of getting back to his “roots as a player,” Rodríguez was on the field early Thursday before the Mariners’ series finale against the Texas Rangers taking batting practice from Franmy Peña – a longtime scout and friend of Rodríguez who is perhaps best known for being the center fielder’s pitcher during his two appearances in the Home Run Derby – and M’s director of hitting strategy Edgar Martínez.

Julio out early yesterday with Edgar and his HR Derby pitcher Franmy Pena working on getting the ball in the air. pic.twitter.com/VGAhIgg2pa

— Shannon Drayer (@shannondrayer) September 10, 2026

“(Peña) signed me to the Mariners,” Rodríguez told reporters after Thursday’s game. “He helped me develop back then when I was a kid, and I just realized I needed a little refresher on things and just kind of getting back to who I am and the things I do well.”

As far as what Rodríguez meant by getting back to his roots?

“Just putting myself in position to hit the ball,” he said. “I feel like you can have all the analysis that you want, but if that (front) foot is not ready to hit the ground, everything bad is going to happen. I feel like that’s something that I realized for myself where I have a little loophole, and (I’m) definitely talking to different people about what’s going on… Hearing from different sources has definitely helped me identify a little bit more tweaks that I needed to make.”

In baseball, the work players put in doesn’t always pay off immediately. In fact, oftentimes it takes days or even weeks. But Rodríguez ended up seeing some quick results Thursday afternoon he hopes he can build off.

With the Mariners trailing 3-1 in the bottom of the seventh of a series rubber match, Rodríguez got his bat head out in front on a sinker on the lower-inside part of the plate and rocketed a 410-foot, go-ahead three-run homer into the Rangers’ bullpen that lifted the M’s to a 4-3 win at T-Mobile Park.

“It’s a process, but at the same time, I feel really good when I go out to the game and the things that I’ve been working on show up right away,” he said.

Manager Dan Wilson recognized the work Rodríguez has been putting in to try to close his season on a high note.

“All these guys continue to work, they continue to make their adjustments, continue to find what they can find here, and Julio has been at the top of that list,” Wilson said after Thursday’s game. “And I thought the swing he put on that today – he got a pitch he could handle down and in there and just went down and got it. A line drive, hit it hard – there was no way that the ballpark could contain it because it was just hit so hard. Just a really good swing, and as we’ve said before, this game rewards you when you do things right.

“The work he’s been putting in and the time he’s been putting in was a was a big payoff for us today with that swing.”

Rodríguez and the Mariners know they have a steep hill to climb if they want to make an improbable run to the postseason over the next 2 1/2 weeks, but the focus is on what they can control.

“We know where we’re at and we gotta continue to show up and win any game that we can, especially now in these last few games that we have, and then see what happens,” Rodríguez said. “That’s the only thing we can control: how we show up, how we bring ourselves, how we compete.”

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