Timing up fastballs, getting ahead: How J-Rod is trying to turn the corner

SEATTLE -- Julio Rodríguez arrived at T-Mobile Park on Saturday afternoon and asked an empty stadium for answers.

In a power drought that no one could’ve envisioned at the season’s one-quarter mark, Rodríguez took part in early batting practice with Mariners director of hitting strategy Jarret DeHart, leading to conversations that were positive and simplistic:

Be on time for the fastball.

Those efforts paid off in a big way 24 hours later, when Rodríguez blasted a 409-foot, two-run homer that lifted Seattle to an 8-4 win over the A’s on Sunday afternoon. The deep fly was just his second of the season and first at home, and it snapped a streak of 43 plate appearances without an extra-base hit.

For good measure, Rodríguez came inches shy of another homer in the fifth, instead settling for a 101.7 mph, 403-foot double that nicked the top of the yellow padding in deep left-center.

Signs had been brewing that Rodríguez was on the cusp, especially after scorching three balls over 100 mph in Saturday’s loss that all went for outs.

“I've been putting all the work in and doing everything I can possibly do,” Rodríguez said. “But sometimes, you think that you're doing everything, but then the game shows you 'OK, you need to do a little bit more.' And that's kind of where I'm at.”

For all the Mariners’ efforts to re-tool their offense last offseason, it centered around Rodríguez being a star. Yet, the .547 OPS that they’re receiving from the No. 2 spot in the lineup that he’s occupied in all but four of his 41 games is MLB’s third lowest.

“There's more boxes that I need to keep checking, I guess -- or different boxes that I need to keep checking,” Rodríguez said.

‘On time for the fastball’
Rodríguez’s homer was against a middle-away, 88 mph sinker from lefty Alex Wood, which tied back into his grander approach of timing up fastballs. The double was on a 92.4 mph four-seamer up and in from lefty Kyle Muller.

Rodríguez’s .321 batting average against heaters is well above the .242 league average. But before Sunday’s massive blast, it hadn’t correlated to damage. Of his 121 swings on in-zone fastballs, only three had been barrels.

More specifically, on fastballs over the heart of the plate, 32.4% of his contact had been classified by Statcast as weak/poor, 17th worst in the game.

Then he added two barrels against fastballs on Sunday alone.

“If you're on time for the fastball, you can hit anything,” Rodríguez said. “I feel like that's something that I've been struggling with a little bit. And I feel like, little by little, we're definitely getting better at it and figuring out the way that is the best for me to time it up.”

‘Earn your pitches’
To get into more fastball sequences, better plate discipline is vital. Entering Sunday, Rodríguez has been behind in counts 33.1% of the time, 20th worst in MLB and more than each of his first two years. Sunday’s homer was in a 1-2 count.

There’s always been swing-and-miss to his game, and that attribute at times makes him a threat when he’s able to connect on a “pitcher’s pitch” for a knock. But when he isn’t doing so consistently, or not hitting for power, a 28.7% strikeout rate that is tied for 22nd-worst in the game becomes far more exacerbated.

“With him, it's understanding how teams are going to pitch him,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “They're not going to lay the first one in there for him. They're going to challenge him. You have to earn your pitches to hit by laying off the bad ones.”

‘Getting more into my legs’
Rodríguez’s slugging percentage jumped to .323 on Sunday from .291, which ranked 158th of 172 qualified hitters. That 194-point drop from last year was MLB’s 13th-largest, before the big homer.

Some of it has been mechanical. Rodríguez installed a new setup in Spring Training, intending for fewer movements into the hitting position, but for whatever reasons, it impacted his balance.

“When you get in a hurry to hit and you jump forward -- all of a sudden, you're not going to be able to stay behind the ball and get it in the air,” Servais said. “That's when you smother a lot of balls on the ground.”

Rodríguez recently made an adjustment more emblematic of his old setup, “because I like getting more into my legs,” he said, “and I feel like I wasn't getting as much out of my body as I would like to.”

Aside from Rodríguez being steadfast with his preparation and confidence that things will turn, the Mariners’ offense depends on it.