Seattle Mariners' Julio Rodriguez Deserves Some Credit, But Still Needs Refined Approach
Heading into Sunday's contest against the Chicago Cubs, Seattle Mariners outfielder Julio Rodriguez has, by far, the lowest strikeout rate of his career at 20.2 percent. That's down more than five percent from a season ago and more than four percent from his career average.
However, as has been well-reported, his lower strikeout rate is coming at the expense of hard hit balls, power and slugging. He's swinging more often, and while he's not striking out as much, he's also not doing as much damage as he's typically done.
For all the complaining about Rodriguez this season, there's a few things that can be true at the same time. The first, as I explained on the Refuse to Lose podcast, is that he deserves some credit here.
Julio Rodriguez deserves some credit here. Nobody wants to give him credit, but he deserves credit. He is trying to address a weakness in his own game, and he is trying to address a weakness in this teams game. He is trying to rectify a problem, a problem that we have all seen. The Mariners led baseball in strikeouts last season. They almost made baseball history for the most strikeouts in a single season. They got rid of guys like Teoscar Hernandez and Eugenio Suarez, supposedly, in order to help cut their strikeouts. Julio Rodriguez is trying to alleviate his own strikeout problem. He deserves some credit for that. This is a guy who is very clearly working.
However, it goes beyond that as well. Rodriguez needs to find an approach at the plate and stick to it. It's good to be aggressive, but you have to be aggressive at the right pitches. It's good to swing on 0-0 fastballs or 1-0 fastballs and do damage against them. What you can't do is swing at a first pitch slider well off the plate and ground out to second, or put yourself in an 0-1 count that puts the pitcher in control. Every time you do that, you are helping to get yourself out, which is something Rodriguez has done far too often.
He needs to look for the fastball and be aggressive on it, and if he doesn't get it, he needs to lay off of it to try to force the pitcher to come with a fastball.
You can hear more of my thoughts on the Refuse to Lose podcast below:
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