40 in 40: Julio Rodriguez stands alone

it is a lonely thing to be a hero

Baseball is a lonely game. Which is odd for a team sport.

It’s not like other lonely sports like golf or rally racing, where your performance is measured against some opponent you can’t see. Instead, it is a fundamentally confrontational sport, made up of a series of 1v1 encounters. The experience of playing baseball is similar to the experience of team fencing. You stand off to the side and wait your turn. There’s not a very much direct cooperation between teammates.

And so, a team sport where there are at least 10 players on the field at any given time feels lonely. The hitter standing in the box faces against a pitcher alone, and the outfielder on the grass fields the ball alone.

And yet, they are completely exposed. The field offers nowhere to hide from the thousands of fans watching and judging. Every mistake, twitch, and blink are recorded by high definition cameras and rendered in exacting detail on countless screens. To be a Major League Baseball player is to be alone in public, to willingly make oneself vulnerable to untold scrutiny and still be expected to perform. That any manage it at all is a miracle.

By the measure of any normal baseball player, Julio Rodriguez had a great 2023. He was an all-star and silver slugger, and he came fourth in MVP voting. He had 17 hits in a four-game span, an all time MLB record. Very few players could be disappointed after a 30-30, 5.9 fWAR season. But:

By some metrics, Julio’s 2023 was a slump. His wRC+ fell by 20 points (146 to 126) and his K% stayed far too high at 24.5%. Like a small dog let loose in the front yard, he’s still chasing everything, sporting an O-Swing% of 41%. The worst part of his 2023 season, however, was his Fangraphs Clutch score of -0.96, meaning he was very bad in high-leverage situations. As an example, on July 29, Julio stepped into the box in the ninth inning with two on and two out in a one-run game. About as high-leverage as you can get. Here’s how it ended.

Now Clutch is not a predictive measure for year-over-year success in high-leverage situations. It purely measures past performance. It is entirely possible that Julio could become Mr. Ninth this year. It also measures a player against themself, meaning that last year in high leverage situations, Julio regressed from superstar to a mere mortal. His actual high-leverage stats aren’t that bad.

But in the moment, while we were watching him struggle, it felt that bad. And no one felt it more than Julio. He has always been locked in to the discourse, and it is clear that he wants, more than anything, to take the Mariners over the top and win every single game.

Much of his difficulty last year came from that drive. His high chase rate is driven by his desire to win. He craves those moments where, with one fluid swing, he can bring the crowded fans to their feet and send them into a frenzy. So he overextends, swinging at any pitch, trusting his raw talent to bring his bat to the ball and drive it out. Except that doesn’t always work. And, because of the loneliness of baseball, we all saw it. We have all seen this face.

But Julio is a star. We can all see that plainly. Despite the vulnerability of being a baseball player, despite the isolation in the batter’s box and in center field, Julio manages to bring all of us down with him. He is one of the few baseball players who knows that, fundamentally, he is playing a game.

And he has been putting in the work this offseason to get even better.

Julio saddles himself with both the franchise and the fans. He carries both, and it causes him to sometimes push too far. But he does it anyway because he knows it’s better than not caring at all.

Julio knows that no matter how lonely it is to face down a pitcher one-on-one, as long as he takes us for the ride, he is never truly alone.