Julio Rodriguez caps career day with 3-run homer to lead Mariners’ comeback over Royals

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Survey the visitors clubhouse here, and you’ll generally get the same kind of superlatives you’d expect from the same question:

How would you describe what Julio is doing right now?

“Incredible.”

“Locked in.”

“Thank God for Julio.”

Jarret DeHart’s response is the one that provided the most insight, the most clarity, into the sudden resurgence of Julio Rodriguez, whose eighth-inning, three-run home run – and the first five-hit game of his career – carried the Mariners to a 6-4 comeback victory over the Kansas City Royals on Thursday afternoon, nudging Seattle closer to a wild-card playoff position.

“Controlled” is the word DeHart, one the Mariners’ hitting coaches, used to describe what he’s seen out of Rodriguez this week.

Here’s what he means by that, and why it’s so meaningful:

It was just about 24 hours earlier, during one of their regular pregame sessions in the batting cages, that DeHart and Rodriguez continued their ongoing attempts to tweak the “load” in the slugger’s swing.

Rodriguez, at times, has gotten too demonstrative, too big, with that load. He would tend to drop his hands a bit too much and dip his back leg a bit too far, which in turn caused him to feel like he had to speed up his swing.

“We’ve been trying to slow (the load) down and get it quieter,” DeHart said. “We just tried to eliminate it. Get it out of there.”

What they decided to do before Wednesday’s game was have Rodriguez widen his stance. Nothing dramatic, but enough of a shift where Rodriguez felt like he was better connected to the ground and didn’t need an aggressive load before each swing.

The results?

“Amazing.”

“Special.”

“What we know he can be.”

Since the swing adjustment, Rodriguez had nine hits over his final 11 at-bats in the final two games against the Royals.

He drove in the game-wining run in the ninth inning on Wednesday with a ground ball single to right field.

On a humid Thursday afternoon, he showed off his power, turning on a 97-mph fastball from Carlos Hernandez and sending it 438 feet to left field.

He emphatically slammed his bat to the ground as the ball sailed out of the park, and then circled the bases for his 20th homer of the season.

“I was really proud and grateful that I was able to do that in that moment for the team,” said Rodriguez, the first player in franchise history to hit 20 homers in his first two seasons.

He drove in five runs Thursday, tying his career high, and finished 12 for 21 in the series with 11 RBI.

“Like I always say, this is a game of adjustments and how do you put yourself in the best position to succeed,” Rodriguez said. “I feel like that’s something that we’ve been working on, and it’s definitely paid off.”

The Mariners (66-55), after coughing up a ninth-inning lead in a loss to the Royals (39-84) on Monday, took the final three games to win the series and pull within a half game of idle Toronto (67-55) in the American League wild-card chase.

They continue their 10-game road trip Friday in Houston.

“We haven’t played the cleanest baseball, but we’re finding a way to win games,” manager Scott Servais said. “And today it was about Julio. What a game.”

In the sixth inning, Rodriguez hit a screaming line drive, 110.5 mph off the bat, right over the head of Royals left fielder MJ Melendez.

That drove in one run to give the M’s a 2-1 lead. It would have been more, but Dominic Canzone was thrown out at the plate on a 7-6-2 relay, one of three outs the Mariners made on the bases Thursday (Rodriguez was picked off at first and Dylan Moore was out at first on a strange play in which he thought Melendez made a diving catch on a line drive).

Mariners starter George Kirby was sharp early, allowing only a Nelson Velazquez solo homer in the fourth inning that sailed just over a leaping Rodriguez at the wall in center field.

That had snapped a streak of 162/3 scoreless innings for Kirby, who threw nine shutout innings Saturday in Seattle (in the Mariners’ 1-0 extra-innings loss to Baltimore).

The Royals scored three runs off Kirby in the sixth to take a 4-2 lead. Kansas City’s young, aggressive lineup hunted fastballs all series, and they hit several of Kirby’s best fastballs hard.

“I think I could have executed a little better today,” Kirby said. “If I didn’t throw any fastballs, I probably would’ve done really well today. They hit fastballs really well. We had a good game plan. That one inning just got away from me a little bit.”

Matt Brash, who blew a save chance in Monday’s loss, rebounded with back-to-back saves in the final two games of the series. He needed just eight pitches to close it out for his fourth save of the season Thursday.