Surging Julio Rodríguez’s career-best start shouldn’t come as surprise

For the past few years, each Seattle Mariners season has featured the same big question about one of the franchise’s cornerstone players.

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Will this be the year Julio Rodríguez finally gets his bat going early?

Rodríguez has been a notorious slow starter during his five-year big league career, starting with his rookie year in 2022 when the then-21 year old struggled through his first month in the majors with a .205 average, .544 OPS and no homers through April.

The star center fielder put up better numbers early in 2023 but nowhere near the type of production he would go on to have in the second half of the year.

Then in 2024, Rodríguez experienced a concerning power outage early on. His average was up from the year prior, but he had just three extra-base hits through April and didn’t hit his second home run until May 12, 41 games into the year.

Last year, Rodríguez showed some signs that he was getting more comfortable at the plate early. The average wasn’t high (.221 through May 6), but he was slugging more than in 2024 and getting on base more via walks than he had early in his previous three seasons. The strikeout rate also dropped considerably.

This year, Rodríguez appears to be finding his swing earlier than normal, which has been evident during the red-hot stretch the three-time All-Star is currently on.

In 19 games since April 16, he has collected hits in 16, including seven multi-hit performances. He’s slugged four homers and five doubles while producing a .321/.354/.538 slash line with an .892 OPS and 155 wRC+ during the stretch.

The recent success the 25 year old has had at the plate has helped him put together some of the best numbers he’s ever had at this point of a season. His .260 batting average, .327 on-base percentage, .407 slugging percentage, .734 OPS and 112 wRC+ are all the highest marks he’s had through May 6 of any year.

During an interview with Seattle Sports’ Wyman and Bob on Wednesday, Rodríguez credited the experience he’s gained as a big leaguer for his better start in 2026.

“I feel getting more experience and like getting to know myself more as a baseball player, the things I do well, the things I’m not so good at – I just feel like that’s what has been clicking for me,” he said. “And staying within myself and trusting my preparation like I was talking about earlier and letting everything out there kind of speak for yourself.”

Rodríguez doesn’t mention any specific adjustments, but that may be because he really didn’t need to make any from last year to this year. A closer look at the metrics and his batted-ball data through May 6 of each of his big league seasons shows that some of the results we’re seeing now are perhaps just coming a year later than they should have, and he might have actually been better through this point of 2025 than he has been this year.

Rodríguez is running a much better strikeout rate now (23%) than he had at this point of the 2022-24 seasons, but it’s a tick up from 22.5% through May 6 last year. His 7.9% walk rate is also down from 10.6% at this point last year to 7.9%.

The biggest difference Rodríguez has shown early this year is he appears to be better locked into his timing at the plate. His 41.1% pull rate is the highest it’s ever been at this point and 21.4% opposite field rate is the lowest it’s been.

But that also hasn’t led to harder-hit balls. He currently has the highest soft-contact rate he’s had at this point of a season at 20.6%, up from 14.9% a year ago. His hard-hit rate through May 6 is also down year over year from a career-best 38.3% to 34.8%.

Another aspect that has been thought to be an issue for Rodríguez when he’s not performing to his potential at the plate is hitting too many groundballs, but his 46.4% groundball rate right now is the highest it’s been at this point of a season since his rookie season and slightly higher than a year ago.

Better luck, however, is something Rodríguez is having more of this year compared to early last year. He’s currently running a .318 BABIP, .300 is considered to be the general league-wide average. At the same point in 2025, he had a .248 BABIP, which over the course of a full year would have been tied for the third-lowest mark in MLB.

Despite having less luck at the plate, Rodríguez’s overall production at this point last year wasn’t far off from where it is now. It may just seem like it was because his .221 average was so much lower than the .260 he has right now. His .407 slugging percentage this year is identical to where it was this point last year, and his .327 on-base percentage and .734 OPS are each only four points higher.

So if Rodríguez was having the same batted-ball luck at this point a year ago, we’d be talking about two straight years where the slugger has seemingly found his swing early than we’ve become accustomed to.

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