Unfinished: Julio Rodríguez
Julio Rodríguez is one of the game’s best prospects—and it’s clear why
Where does one begin to describe Julio Rodríguez? For a fan base eager to see what’s on the horizon, in search of a player or players to pin their hopes on, the teenage phenom might as well have been specifically crafted to check every box.
An athletic specimen and five-tool player? Oh, for sure. Advanced beyond his years, with a ceiling so high it lets your imagination run wild? Naturally. Balancing the charisma of a future star with the work ethic of a 25th-man grinder? That’s Julio.
But above all, Julio Rodríguez wants what they want.
“I want to bring championships,” Rodríguez said, raising a point he’ll hit any chance he’s asked. “The people here want it bad, but I feel like I want it more than anyone else.”
For the 18-year-old out of the Dominican Republic, there’s a lot of ground to cover between here and a parade through downtown Seattle, but Rodríguez is traveling it as well as one could since signing with the Mariners as a 16-year-old in the summer of 2017.
After an MVP season in the Dominican Summer League in 2018, Rodríguez jumped two levels to open 2019 with the Low-A West Virginia Power, splitting the season between there and High-A Modesto.
The results? He notched a .326/.390/.540 slash line with 63 runs scored, 26 doubles, four triples, 12 home runs and 69 RBI in 84 combined games. Pretty solid for someone the same age as kids graduating high school and spending the summer readying for freshman year of college.
“I don’t like anything easy,” Rodríguez said of the organization’s continued effort to test him. “Whenever you have something easy, you don’t feel proud of yourself because you made it. I really like all the challenges that the Mariners have set for me.”
“If you challenge me, I will ascend to it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I have, like, little chance, I will just go for it.”
It’s that mindset, the complete makeup, that stat lines and prospect rankings and grainy highlights don’t show.
“He’s a joyful young player who loves the game and loves his teammates, and it oozes from him every day,” GM Jerry Dipoto said of Rodríguez—who, for the record, is ranked as the 25th-best prospect in the sport according to MLB Pipeline.
“I just like to enjoy the game,” Rodríguez said when asked to describe his playing style and his personality on the field. “There’s a lot of people that ask why I’m always smiling. This is the best sport in the world — why wouldn’t I?”
Even if baseball weren’t the best sport in the world—which, of course, it is—Julio has still had plenty to smile about.
We mentioned the full 2019 line, but that promotion to Modesto is worth closer inspection.
Even in just reaching that level, Rodríguez was one of only three 18-year-olds in all of minor league baseball to play High-A ball in 2019. And he didn’t only reach the level—for 17 games, he dominated it.
Joining the Nuts for a postseason push in mid-August, he hit .462/.514/.738 with with 13 runs scored, six doubles, three triples, two home runs and 19 RBI.
It, of course, began with him kicking down the door in his High-A debut. Rodríguez fell a triple short of the cycle, going 4-for-5 with a run scored, a double and a clutch grand slam. The salami, joining another with West Virginia, stood out as one of Rodríguez’s favorite plays of 2019.
“Everybody was pushing for the playoffs and when I hit that grand slam, everybody went just crazy,” he said.
Part of that torrid stretch in the California League, Rodríguez followed up his four-hit performance with a 5-for-5 outing in late August, scorching three extra-base hits vs. the Stockton Ports.
But for Rodríguez, it’s all about that team’s goals. It’s why, even though he spent all of 2019 years younger than his average teammate, he views himself as a leader—and acts accordingly.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m 0-for-4 or 4-for-4, if my team wins, you will see me high five anybody,” he said. “That’s the type of leader I am. I just try to hype [my teammates] up, never let them get down.”
It’s a leadership role that extends even beyond his day-to-day ball club, with him standing as an example to the organization’s younger Latin American players trying to follow in his footsteps, as few as there may be for an 18-year-old.
“By design or not, to our younger group behind him, Julio is already kind of the grizzled veteran of that group,” Andy McKay, Director of Player Development, said. “They like to follow and he likes to lead.”
The player many diehards look to as the guy after Rodríguez is 17-year-old shortstop Noelvi Marte, who followed Rodríguez’s impressive Dominican Summer League campaign with one of his own.
“Julio is the guy I can rely on to tell me if I did something bad, he’s the guy who can communicate with anybody,” Marte said through a translator. “I haven’t had the chance to play with Julio yet, but it’s coming. We’ll play together soon.”
When we’ll to see these guys play together—not just Marte and Rodríguez, but all the high-ceiling Mariners prospects—and what type of players they’ll become is the looming question.
“To me, he has the upside of not just being a solid Major League player, but a standout Major League player who has the personality to really light up an environment,” Dipoto said of Rodríguez. “That goes from the clubhouse to the fan base to everything in-between.”
What has to happen before that does?
For Rodríguez, he’s constantly focused on improving his approach at the plate, an approach that evaluators inside and outside the organization describe as extremely advanced.
“Right now for him, it’s just his ability to continue to get better at everything he does and continue to fight and search for that extraordinary consistency where he shows up to the ballpark every day and the results become more and more predictable,“ McKay said. “The game is hard and each level presents a new challenge for you and he’ll have more challenges next year.”
It’s hard not to wonder what those challenges might be, especially when the challenges in 2019 included not only reaching High-A, but finishing up in the Arizona Fall League—a testing ground for the game’s advanced and elite prospects, many of whom will play in the Majors in 2020.
For Rodríguez, when that day comes it remains to be seen—but he can’t wait for it. He got his first glimpse of T-Mobile Park last December, coming to Seattle for the organization’s annual Leadership Summit.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, I really want to play here.’ I was shaking and everything,” Rodríguez said of his first look at the field, from the ballpark’s press box just above the lower bowl. “I was just imagining all the people saying my name, like ‘Let’s go, Julio!” I really got excited for it.”
As excited as Rodríguez is to hear those cheers, Mariners fans may be just as excited to yell them. When’s that gonna happen?
“Players as talented as they are tend to show up sooner than you think they will and they tend to be ready to impact the game sooner than you think they will,” Dipoto said.
“Phenomenal talent.”
