Julio Rodríguez is Shining Brightly in Seattle
On June 5, former Mariner pitcher now baseball analyst Ryan Rowland-Smith tweeted a graphic that showed the first 50 career games for current Mariner rookie Julio Rodríguez and two former Mariner greats, Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey, Jr. The image showed each player’s batting average, home runs, RBI, and stolen bases in their first 50 career games, with Julio Rodríguez topping the two all-time greats in RBI and stolen bases, while sitting in between them in batting average and home runs.
While the numbers are factual, they should come with a big caveat. Alex Rodriguez played 17 games in the major leagues as an 18-year-old and 48 more as a 19-year-old. Griffey’s first 50 games came at age 19. Julio Rodríguez, on the other hand, is 21 years old. It’s an accurate graphic, but somewhat misleading consider the age difference. Still, through one-third of his first major league season, Julio Rodríguez has brought sunshine to Seattle.
It started poorly, as Mariner fans know. Through May 5, Julio Rodríguez was hitting .220/.283/.297, with 36 strikeouts in 99 plate appearances. After being among the favorites for the AL Rookie of the Year Award in the pre-season, he seemed more likely to be sent down to AAA than to be a contender for that trophy.
As this article from FanGraphs details, umpires were not kind to Rodríguez during the early part of the season. He was wrung up on numerous pitches outside the strike zone, which contributed to his high strikeout rate, something that had not been an issue when he was in the minor leagues. His season started to turn around in early May and his strikeout rate has dropped to a more manageable 25 percent over the last month. Now, his early-season struggles are behind him, as evidenced by his .308/.376/.517 batting line that has resulted in a 165 wRC+, which ranks 22nd in baseball among qualifying hitters since May 6.
While he didn’t get to the big leagues as a teenager like A-Rod and Griffey, Julio Rodríguez is having one of the seven best seasons for a 21-or-younger position player in Mariner history. The top five spots belong to A-Rod and Griffey, then comes Ketel Marte, with Julio right behind him (see chart below). The assorted projections at FanGraphs have Julio Rodríguez projected to earn between 2.6 and 3.3 WAR over the remainder of the season, which would put him in the range of third or fourth on the chart below, in the ballpark of 1990 Ken Griffey, Jr. and 1997 Alex Rodriguez.
Julio Rodríguez Could be the fifth AL Rookie of the Year in Seattle Mariner history
The Seattle Mariners have had four AL Rookie of the Year Award winners in their history. Julio Rodríguez could be number five. Of the four Mariners who previously won the award, three come with an asterisk. In 2000, reliever Kazuhiro Sasaki signed as a free agent with the Mariners, saved 37 games, and won the AL Rookie of the Year Award at the age of 32. He had previously spent 10 years in the Japan Central League and already had 229 career saves under his belt. He held the single-season saves record in Japan and was named to eight all-star teams in Japan. That’s not your typical rookie of the year.
The following year, the legendary Ichiro not only won the AL Rookie of the Year Award, he was also named AL MVP. He is still one of only two players who have done this, along with Fred Lynn in 1975. Ichiro was 27 years old when he came over to the U.S. from Japan to play for the Mariners after having played nine seasons and collected 1278 hits in his career. In Japan, he won seven straight batting titles and had three consecutive MVP seasons. So, yeah, he was also not your typical rookie.
The most-recent AL Rookie of the Year winner for the Mariners was outfielder Kyle Lewis, who earned all 30 first place votes in 2020 to finish ahead of Luis Robert and Cristian Javier. The asterisk with Lewis is that this was the shortened 60-game COVID-19 season. It still counts, of course, but it happened in a strange year. Also, Lewis won the award based on his first 28 games in 2020, when he hit .373/.463/.569 (190 wRC+). In his last 30 games that year, he hit .154/.264/.308 (64 wRC+).
The first Mariner Rookie of the Year—and one who played an entire season and wasn’t a veteran of Japanese baseball—was first baseman Alvin Davis, back in 1984. Davis didn’t start the season as the Mariners first baseman that year. The job was supposed to be the domain of the perennially underrated Ken Phelps of Seinfeld fame.
Phelps had destroyed minor league pitching at the Triple-A level for years and it finally looked like he would get his chance in 1984, at the age of 29. He started the year as the Mariners first baseman and had five hits in his first 10 at bats, including two homers, but suffered a broken finger on a hit by pitch in the third game of the season. This opened up the spot for Alvin Davis and Davis went on to be named the 1984 AL Rookie of the Year. It should be noted that Phelps actually had a higher wRC+ than Davis that year (143 to 140), but in 318 fewer plate appearances.
Davis won the Mariners’ first AL Rookie of the Year Award with 25 first place votes. Second in the voting was his teammate, left-handed pitcher Mark Langston. Twins outfielder Kirby Puckett was third. Davis was worth 5.3 WAR according to FanGraphs, which is the second-highest WAR by a rookie position player in Mariners history. Ichiro tops the list, with 6.0 WAR, but as mentioned above, he was not your typical rookie. Julio Rodríguez projects to finish in the 4.5 to 5.0 WAR range, which would slot him third among position players, ahead of 1977 Ruppert Jones (3.7 WAR). The top two seasons by Mariner rookie pitchers belong to 1984 Mark Langston (4.4 WAR) and 1992 Dave Fleming (4.4 WAR).
You might be wondering about Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr. when it comes to Rookie of the Year voting. A-Rod, as mentioned above, played in the major leagues when he was 18 and it didn’t go well as he hit .204/.241/.204 in 17 games. He played in another 48 games as a 19-year-old, but still struggled, hitting .232/.264/.408. By the time he busted out as a 20-year-old with a monster 1996 season (.358/.414/.631, 141 R, 36 HR, 123 RBI), he had exhausted his Rookie of the Year eligibility. He finished second in MVP voting behind Juan Gonzalez despite being by far the superior player.
Griffey finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting in 1989 behind reliever Greg Olson and swingman Tom Gordon. He missed almost a month of games with a broken hand. Had he not missed that time, there’s a good chance he would have won the award.
As for Julio Rodríguez, he’s in the conversation for the award this year, but he’s not the leading contender. That would be shortstop Jeremy Peña of the Houston Astros, who leads all AL rookies in FanGraphs WAR, at 2.4. Rodríguez is second, at 1.7, but he’s coming on strong.
