DETROIT -- On the national stage, Julio Rodríguez's decisive double that lifted the Mariners to a 3-2 win in Game 2 of this American League Division Series on Sunday night might’ve looked like a breakout moment.
Yet, for those who’ve watched closely for the past three months, that punctuating knock had been brewing for quite some time. All that was missing was the October platform, and with it on Sunday, a potential postseason giant might have been born.
“I do think that what we watched from July to the end of the year was kind of his last step of him evolving into one of the most complete players in the game,” Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said.
It wasn’t just the playoff stakes but the way Rodríguez connected on that double that stood out -- ahead in the count, balanced in the box, on time for the fastball and able to adjust to the splitter that was right in his wheelhouse.
More so, it’s that he yanked the ball over the third baseman’s head and easily into the left-field corner, the type of contact that mostly eluded him before the All-Star break.
“He looks controlled in the box,” Cal Raleigh said. “He doesn't look off balance. He's taking good pitches. He just looks confident, looks slow, looks balanced. And usually those are good things. You just tell by guys' takes and their swings, even their foul balls, how well they're seeing it. He’s seeing it well. He's slowing the game down.”
It was perhaps fitting that Raleigh was the one who scored the game-winning run on that double, because after all, he was instrumental in helping Rodríguez find more lift in his swing earlier this summer.
Including both his right- and left-handed swings, Raleigh pulled the ball in the air more than all but one hitter in the sport among 237 qualified players -- precisely the reason why he was able to shatter a litany of home-run records en route to 60.
And a notable cause in helping Raleigh do so was a simple tee drill that he adopted in Spring Training, one in which he raises the tee to an extremely high level off the ground, about chest high, then attempts to elevate the baseball from there. The tactic, which was encouraged through first-year Mariners hitting coaches Kevin Seitzer and Bobby Magallanes, helps the hitter be more vertical and less horizontal in his follow-through while leveraging his back leg more.
A few weeks before the All-Star break, Rodríguez wanted to give it a try.
“In the first half, he was battling, over-striding,” Seitzer said of Rodríguez. “He was dropping his hands. He would crash forward, and then his hands were getting too steep, and then he couldn't catch back up. And so we started doing Cal's drill, to where he's keeping his hands up trying to hit it in the air. And that's been the focus. ... That’s really it.”
Dating back to July 11 -- the day that he declined an invitation to the All-Star Game for a mental and physical reset -- and including the postseason, Rodríguez is hitting .304 (eighth-best in MLB) with a .607 slugging percentage (fifth-best) and .966 OPS (sixth-best) to go with 22 homers (tied-fourth-most).
More telling in that before/after, his line drive and fly ball rate has climbed to 52.3% compared to 43% in his first 92 games. Even marginal increases go a long way, because he has a 1.021 slugging percentage on those batted balls. Meanwhile, his ground-ball rate dropped -- from 50.5% to 44.4%, before and after -- and he’s slugging .307 on those.
“As a baseball player, you’re always going to have to evolve,” Rodríguez said. “You're always going to have to keep up with the game and make adjustments. But I feel like for me as a hitter, since I was a kid, I've never thought of myself as a big power hitter like that. But I always thought I could drive the ball from gap to gap. But also taking my hits and taking my shots.”
As for Raleigh’s influence, Rodríguez said: “There are a lot of things that you can pick up from the guy. He's been amazing this year, not just like hitting the home runs, all the highlights and all the things -- but his consistency, his work ethic, his preparation, his mindset that he brings to every single game. And I feel like that's something that I really try to get from him, too.”
Rodríguez has a four-year track record now of being significantly more productive in the second half (.902 OPS) compared to first (.737 OPS), which Seitzer said he’d heard about when taking the job after 10 seasons in Atlanta. Still, seeing the before and after was stark.
“My goal next year is, that crap ain't gonna happen,” Seitzer said. “It's gonna be good from the start. I mean, everybody goes through funks where they hit a rough spell. But his was extended. And the swing adjustments he's made has helped him immensely."
No one has ever questioned Rodríguez’s potential -- or more chiefly, his work ethic. And his evolution in 2025 has him shining bright on the sport’s biggest stage, with potentially even more to come.