SEATTLE — If you could build a player to take the key at-bat of a tied playoff game in the eighth inning, you would summon an extrovert who considers pressure a privilege. You would want someone who has so much fun playing the game that he plays the animated hydroplane color-coded race with teammates as it unfolds on the ballpark videoboard. You would want someone with a power/speed combination at a historic level. You want someone who said “No, thanks” to the All-Star Game because he needed to get his head and stroke right.
You want someone who makes a teammate say, “He comes through because of his mental preparation. He loves the pressure. He rises to the moment. He is made for the big moment.”
Seattle center fielder Julio Rodriguez, as described by teammate Jorge Polanco, is the guy you want. Sunday’s ALDS Game 2 offered the best proof yet.
The Mariners jumped back into the ALDS against Detroit, just when they threatened to gift-wrap the Tigers another win, because at every moment Seattle has the two best players on the field and it’s not even close: Cal Raleigh and Rodriguez.
CAL AND JULIO. CLUTCH. #SeizeTheMoment pic.twitter.com/0v51DaT07V
— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) October 6, 2025
Tigers manager A.J. Hinch got burned by asking reliever Kyle Finnegan to pitch for the fourth time in five days. The righthander was gassed. Finnegan’s trademark splitter lacked its usual sink. Left up in the zone, it begged to be hit. Raleigh and Rodriguez obliged.
Raleigh hit a hanging splitter for a double and Rodriguez hit a hanging splitter for another double. Double, double, toil and trouble for Detroit. Seattle survived blowing a 2–0 lead to win, 3–2.
Getting through Raleigh and Rodriguez has been a chore for the Tigers. In two games they are 8-for-18. During The Summer of Cal, rightly feted for his crazy achievement of hitting 60 home runs while catching more innings than anybody in the league, you may have missed the greatness of Rodriguez. It didn’t start this year until Rodriguez turned down a selection to be an All-Star.
“Man, I didn’t do much during the break,” he said. “I mean, I got more work in, but I just needed time to get my head right. I needed a reset. Just needed to get in the right frame of mind.”
A pedestrian slash line of .252/.313/.417 became a bold .290/.341/.560 after the break. It continued what’s been a strange pattern for the 24-year-old: slow starts and molten hot finishes. His career second-half slugging of .552 is better than every active player except Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez and Shohei Ohtani.
Through 590 career games, Rodriguez has 112 homers and 116 stolen bases. Only three other players have ever reached those thresholds through the same number of games: Ronald Acuña Jr., Alfonso Soriano and Eric Davis.
The postseason brings out the best in him. His career slash line through seven postseason games is .281/.378/.563. And now he has a signature moment, what he called the greatest thrill of his career.
Mariners fans have waited nearly Rodriguez’s lifetime to see their team win a home game. He was 10 months old when the franchise won its last home postseason game in 2001. Polanco was the early star in Game 2 by smoking two home runs off Tarik Skubal, once after taking a close changeup down and two innings later after taking two close changeups down.
“Those are pitches I usually get swings on,” Skubal said. “He stayed off them. It’s a credit to him. He’s a good hitter.”
JORGE POLANCO AGAIN! #ALDS pic.twitter.com/hVOUR8N4Ne
— MLB (@MLB) October 6, 2025
Said Polanco, “Our game plan was to just take him up the middle. When you do that, you see the changeup longer.”
Skubal’s changeup is the best pitch in baseball as ranked by run value. Oddly, he has used the pitch less in the postseason. His two lowest starts of changeup use this year have been his two postseason starts: ALWC Game 1 (21.5%) and ALDS Game 2 (21.6%).
Seattle reliever Matt Brash jeopardized the 2–0 lead with a senseless leadoff walk in the top of the eighth and an equally perplexing fastball to Spencer Torkelson after four sliders away. Torkelson slashed it for a tying double.
The tie did not last long, certainly not through the Cal-Julio gauntlet. Rodriguez hit second base after his go-ahead double with excited shouts and fists bumps worthy of the moment. It seemed right that this homegrown star playing under a seven-year contract with a five-year option would be the one to deliver the deciding run. These are the moments that define a player as “clutch.”
“I feel like in games like this, I feel like any situation is clutch,” he said. “You can win a game in the first three innings of the game, in the middle of the game or late in the game because every single run matters.
“And, you know, at the end of the day, people are going to call me whatever they want to call me, but I feel like the biggest pride I take is helping the team win. In any situation that I can, I feel like that’s what makes me feel good. And listen, if they want to say that I’m clutch too, okay. Cool. So be it.”
Cool. If there is a better word than clutch to capture the zen of Julio, especially in the heat of the moment, it is that.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Julio Rodriguez Is the Mariners’ Perfect Clutch-Time Candidate.
