Why this feels like a better start for Mariners’ Julio Rodríguez

Coming out of the gates in a season has never been easy for Seattle Mariners star center fielder Julio Rodríguez, who traditionally finds his stride in the warmer months of the year.

Seattle Mariners place 3B Brendan Donovan on 10-day IL

In 2026, it’s been the same case for Rodríguez, who enters play Monday with a .209/.313/.279 slash line for a .592 OPS with just one home run in the Mariners’ 23 games.

That being said, if you look at his last 15 games, the stats are much more palatable even if they’re not full summer Julio numbers. Over that stretch, he’s slashed .268/.359/.375 for a .734 OPS with six walks to 14 strikeouts in 64 plate appearances.

“I kind of look at Julio’s start and I’m like, it’s still not great, but it feels anyway a whole lot better than the last couple of years,” Mike Salk said Monday on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk.

Salk had an interesting statistic to point to, one that he always keeps an eye on when it comes to Rodríguez – swing percentage.

For his career, the 25-year-old Rodríguez has taken a swing at 53.5% of the pitches he’s seen. From 2023-25, his swing percentage was 53.9% or higher in each of those campaigns. But this season so far it’s down to 50.9%, which is lower than every season except his rookie year in 2022, when the mark was 50.2%.

In 2026, Rodríguez has taken a swing at just 28.6% of the first pitches he’s seen in a plate appearance, over 10% lower than in any other season in his career. And his walk percentage of 11.1% is four points higher than his career high set in 2022.

This seems to point to Rodríguez being more comfortable in the batter’s box early on even if the hits – and especially the ones for extra bases – aren’t coming as often as he or Mariners fans would like.

Mariners insider Shannon Drayer of Seattle Sports shared her view of Rodríguez’s status through the first 3 1/2 weeks of the 2026 season in a discussion with Brock and Salk.

“I think I’ve seen from him a lot of confidence in where he’s at right now,” Drayer said. “… I think he thinks that he’s in a pretty good place with what he is doing and that it is going to continue to come. You do see every now and then – and we don’t see it as much as the last few years – but every now and then he does take the wild swing at the wild pitch out of the zone, but it’s nothing like it was before.

“He goes up to the plate, he has a plan.”

Drayer added that with Rodríguez now in his fifth MLB season, he’s been able to draw from his own experience more to get himself back on track.

“I think that you have seen him make some adjustments, obviously putting the bat on the shoulder (with his batting stance) and just, OK, I’m getting too jumpy at the plate – what can I do to try and relax a little bit? And so I think you’re starting to see a little bit more of that veteran-ness, a little bit more that he understands who he is at the plate. And I think some of the adjustments, he makes on his own now. And it’s very different in that regard in that he is working from a base of experience rather than what he thinks he should be.

“So I think that along those lines, I think he’s been in a good place. I think that we’re seeing his experience really.”

Hear the full Brock and Salk conversation with Mariners insider Shannon Drayer in the final segment of the podcast at this link or in the player below. Catch Brock and Salk from 6-10 a.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports.

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