Julio Rodríguez was a tortured MLB star. Now he has found his joy again

Julio Rodríguez exists in a strange little shadow. It is there when the roof of T-Mobile Park is open and present when it is closed. It lingers when he homers just as it does when he strikes out.

At times in recent years – such as when he willed himself to hit 41 home runs for the hometown crowd in the first round of the 2023 Home Run Derby or when he made big changes to his swing after his second straight All-Star season because he thought he could be better – his efforts to outrun it have been clear. At others, that shadow has dulled the twinkle in the eyes of the kid who electrified Seattle with his gleaming smile as a rookie in 2022.

Ironically, it is the shadow of that smiling, sparkling superman and the $200 million contract he signed that Rodríguez spent the past two seasons trying to heave aside. He has not plummeted into irrelevance. He has, in fact, been the 10th-best player in baseball over the past four seasons, according to FanGraphs wins above replacement.

But he has never again matched the .853 OPS he posted in 132 games as a rookie, and a painfully slow first half to 2023 made even a 32-homer, 37-steal season with 103 RBI feel like a disappointing encore. Last year, he wasn’t even an All-Star. This year, when he was named one, there were questions whether he was qualified because he was hitting just .247 with a sub-.700 OPS when the calendar hit July.

“It was easy back then. I was just focused on the game of baseball,” Rodríguez said this week in Baltimore. “But then opinions, people, different perceptions, that’s where it started to get a little bit trickier for me. It was a whole ride. I have been learning about myself and learning the game at the same time.”

Now, after hitting eight homers in July and compiling a 1.053 OPS in August, Rodríguez is suddenly reminding the Mariners – thus far appropriately distracted by the heroics of his teammate Cal Raleigh – why so many people had so many expectations so soon. He was already having an outstanding defensive season and had long since cemented his place as the first player in history to begin his career with four straight 20-homer, 20-steal seasons. Suddenly his Mariners are rolling – and he is in the middle of it all.

“In some ways, he’s aged this year. Matured,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “… And a lot of the joy, the love for the game, coming back. That’s what you love to see. In that process, he looks to be playing very free out there.”

Maybe Rodríguez will finally outrun that shadow if he and his charging Mariners (9-3 in August) vanquish the Houston Astros in the American League West and make the deep October run they have been waiting for since Rodríguez’s arrival seemed to herald a golden era. He and his teammates have reason to believe this is the year for that. In the days since they added Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez at the trade deadline in their most all-in midseason splurge of this decade, Seattle has climbed to within 1½ games of Houston for first place in the division.

“This last week or so has been cool to see,” shortstop J.P. Crawford said. “(Suárez), he’s one of my favorite teammates ever. And Naylor, he’s literally good at everything. So it definitely fills out our lineup more.”

Or maybe, especially if the October run does not materialize, that shadow will adhere even more tightly, lodged somewhere in the difference between the numbers Rodríguez compiles in any given season and the ones he posted in his first.

Rodríguez says he knows people think about those differences. He knows people think a lot of things. He said he always wanted people in Seattle to think the right things about him, to see how hard he works, to know how much he cares. At his most natural, Rodríguez smiles and plays jokes during games, laughs and teases opponents. But at times in recent years, he worried about how people would interpret all that lightheartedness if he struggled. He worried he had to hide it, to earn the right to play free by playing well, all the time.

“I did (worry about what I looked like when we were struggling). Because of the perception I wanted people to have. I know I care about this. I know I care about what I’m doing. I know I prepare myself every day, and I know I’m always working out, trying to get better, trying to evolve and do all those things,” Rodríguez said. “But the perspective I used to have is that the players that do that are serious, more focused, things like that. But I learned I can do the same thing with a smile on my face, and I feel like that’s who Julio is. And now I’m not trying to be anybody else.”

Rodríguez said this realization hit him sometime over the past few months, thanks to a reassuring inner circle and some long conversations with his mother. And letting go, he admits, is easier stated than done.

Perhaps his recent improved production is a direct result, but the 24-year-old is a notorious slow starter in any frame of mind: Rodríguez has a .737 OPS with 53 homers in 370 career first-half games and a .906 OPS with 51 homers in 181 career games played in the second-half swelter. And he still has a 35% chase rate that gets him into trouble. But he is hitting and hitting for power. Because Suárez has struggled to find his footing and Raleigh has cooled, the Mariners have needed that.

At times in the past few years, Rodríguez did not seem to be able to give them what they needed when they needed it most. Big plate appearances in playoff pushes always seemed destined to be his moment. They, like so many of those playoff pushes, always seemed to fall short after his rookie year. He hit .289 with an .893 OPS with two outs and runners in scoring position that magical first season, when the Mariners reached the postseason for the first time since 2001. This year, he is hitting .189 with a .623 OPS in those situations. He has not often been Seattle’s savior. But these days, he is trying not to excommunicate his smile when he isn’t.

“I feel like a lot of people base their happiness on how the game went. Did they go 4 for 4? 0 for 4? I feel like for me, that’s not a sustainable thing to do,” Rodríguez said. “I know my personality now a lot more. I’m able to just navigate it and give myself that grace.”

Certainly, the 2025 Mariners lineup has lightened the load on Rodríguez’s shoulders. For years, the Mariners were a pitching-heavy team that couldn’t hit enough. This year, their pitching is intact – but their lineup has been better, in large part because Raleigh is having one of the more productive offensive seasons of the past half-decade. Rodríguez has not had to be the guy, and thanks to an aggressive deadline from President of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto, he has even more guys sharing the load now than he did last month.

Because of all that, the Mariners look as well constructed for a deep October run as they have at any point since Rodríguez’s debut. The Astros just lost closer Josh Hader for an indefinite amount of time because of a shoulder injury. With the trade deadline come and gone, they do not have time to replace him. Would-be AL powers such as the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers are sputtering. The stars in the Pacific Northwest seem to be aligning.

Rodríguez always felt he was supposed to be the sun at the center of a Mariners age such as this. The city of Seattle always thought so, too. For years, the shadow of those expectations has been pinned to the No. 44 on his back, a reminder Rodríguez certainly did not need. He knows he wants to be the one to bring a title to Seattle. He no longer needs anyone to take his word for it.

“I feel like I’m learning how to let go of that: all the pressure people want to put on me, all the directions people want to pull me in,” Rodríguez said. “I just feel like everybody out there has different perspective on how somebody should live or should look like. But at the end of the day, I’m the one playing center field and batting third in the lineup. I’m the only one that knows how it feels to be me, and I just try to do the best I can.”