The greats shine in October—and the Mariners have them
Julio Rodríguez continues writing his October lore and we love watching him do it.
You can’t have playoff heroes without playoff games.
In Seattle, where October baseball comes around like a rare comet, though hopefully one increasingly tightening its orbit around the sun, it’s easy to forget all the things that come with the Postseason.
For example, the hero. Even if only for a night.
Adam Frazier will always hold a place in the hearts and minds of fans across our fine region, and well beyond. Easily one of the most frustrating players of the 2022 season, he’ll be remembered eternally for that line drive down the line, off the Toronto turf and up against the wall.
You don’t have to be one of your team’s best players to be a hero. You don’t even have to be good, either—though it helps.
Jorge Polanco is good.
Two regular starters removed from Frazier in the Mariners’ interminable search for a longterm second baseman—hell, maybe three or four if you want to count Ryan Bliss and Cole Young—here was Polo, after all the talk and the nagging injuries and touch-and-go availability against left-handed pitching, belting two season-changing bombs off the best southpaw in the sport.
There are so many second-tier Mariners players who deserved at least one night like last night, just one clutch bomb to send the nearly 50,000 at the corner of Edgar and Dave into a frenzy.
That was the part of the thought Sunday afternoon when I decided to go with the old Kyle Seager Seattle Turks jersey, a 2013 throwback I saw on sale a year later at a shop on Occidental.
Seags deserved a playoff game. It’s fun to imagine him, with that pull-happy launch-heavy swing, upper-cutting a moonball 15 rows deep into the right field seats.
If the Mariners had more playoff games, just a few more times when those so-so teams otherwise fell a game short, how many other names would have iconic moments attached to them?
If Adam Frazier can have a moment, why couldn’t Brad Miller? Or Leonys Martín? At least Nelson Cruz?
The Postseason can be a great equalizer. It can take a so-so player and elevate them to legend status.
Or it can take a legend and underscore the one thing they don’t have.
For the bike ride down to game one, I cued up the MarinersPod episode I mentioned in closing out the last post, with Aaron Goldsmith and Gary Hill previewing the series.
One of the things you’ll find in life is that when people really care a whole hell of a lot about something, it shows in their work. That’s true of Gary and Aaron—and so much of the output from the organization as a whole. That’s the Mariners’ marketing and game ops are among the best in sports.
Anyway, Aaron and Gary just nailed it with the preview. They highlighted, among other things, the story of the series thus far: the potential for mid-innings matchups vs. the lefties in the heart of the Tigers order to serve as a lynchpin for games.
In game one, Dan Wilson stuck with his right-handed starter for platoon masher Kerry Carpenter. In game two, he went to the bullpen.
As such, the series heads to Detroit at 1-1.
But going back to that podcast, Aaron and Gary also noted something that often goes unsaid but is, objectively, undeniable.
Julio Rodríguez is on a Hall of Fame trajectory.
Through his first four years—mind you, years that represent his age-21 through age-24 seasons—he is the tenth-most valuable position player in the game with 21.2 fWAR.
This is an oversimplification but the general consensus is that 65 fWAR generally represents the benchmark for earning a plaque in Cooperstown.
The age component is why Julio, compared to Cal Raleigh (7th in that 2022-2025 split), has more of an inside track—though I wouldn’t put it past Cal. He just has that feel.
I was thinking about that when talking to my dad on the phone yesterday afternoon. In a race to head to the airport, I didn’t have the energy or time for a complete analysis when he mentioned the game and the late rally.
“That’s just the type of thing Hall of Fame-level players do,” I said scurrying up the stairs of our townhouse.
They don’t always get the chance to do it, though.
Should Julio make the Hall of Fame, his plaque won’t specifically refer to a late-inning knock in game two of the ALDS, but should it mention rising to the moment in October or, gasp, a title run in 2025, that frozen rope into the corner will play in the minds of fans every time they read that plaque.
Another thing you forget about the postseason, or perhaps never witnessed because the second-most recent time your team made it the primary video format was VHS, is that there’s so much content. So many angles for every play.
For that double, I love this clip from @MLB and @Mariners socials.
The ball finds grass and, as he’s racing up the line, Julio fist-pumps once. Around the bag at first, he fist-pumps a second time. Finally to second, he loses it.
Triumphant.
That’s our guy, man. And that’s how much this means to him.
Forgive me for how often I mention it because it’s probably my favorite moment of my professional career to date, but it wasn’t that long ago I was interviewing this 17-year-old kid on the metal bleachers next to a practice field in Peoria.
You can still see the end product pinned to Julio’s Twitter profile.
To be honest, in the clubhouse, I always say
“WITH THE NUMBER 44, BATTING THIRD, FOR THE SEATTLE MARINERS, JULIO RODRÍGUEZ!”
I always say that.
That would be great.
The best feeling in the world, to be honest.
There’s a new best feeling for him, I’d guess.
Meanwhile, here’s what I looked like, with that Seattle Turks jersey and an M’s ball dad hat in the second row of the View Level.
I saw this feature bouncing around a few places on social and ended up sharing it on Twitter. Basically, you can punch in your seat details and it’ll pull up CCTV-like images from key moments in the game.
If you can momentarily look past this potential panopticon and the slight hop, skip and a jump it’d take to go from ticket stub IG Story frame to the third-party vendor pairing it with some facial recognition and feeding it to ICE or something, it’s kinda cool.
In the replies and quote tweets to my post on Twitter, there’s so much special stuff. Best buddies, fathers and sons, families, all of the above.
This is, admittedly, a bit of a ham-handed conclusion to a somewhat incongruent post, but it’s 12:33am in Montana as I write this and the Mariners have a day game for the series lead tomorrow….today. Whatever.
I guess the thing that links them both is simple, and a sentiment I go to a lot: we’re all people out here.
In the heart of these moments, these swings that define seasons that define eras that sometimes even define lifetimes, we’re all people.
October can be equalizing and revealing. It can be unfair and it can be exuberant beyond expression.
The greats tend to shine through. Julio is showing that. Cal, too.
Whether it’s them or other potential heroes—and there are so many more possibilities—we’ll be right there losing our minds with them…and some of the people we hold most dear.
Let’s get game three and swing this series.
Go M’s.