At some point, the unprecedented August that Julio Rodríguez has put together will quiet down to a simmer instead of a red-hot boil. For now, the Seattle Mariners are going to enjoy the ride their young superstar is taking them on.
Rodríguez remained on fire at the plate with four more knocks, including a two-run homer and an RBI double, in the Mariners’ 7-0 win over the Oakland Athletics on Monday night.
Seattle has won four consecutive games and 12 of 13, with their only loss coming from the Chicago White Sox, as the hottest team in baseball kept rolling behind its suddenly unstoppable offense. The Mariners have piled up 20 wins in the month of August, matching the most in a month in franchise history with two games remaining.
“It’s really good. I feel like everybody is playing like we all know we could,” Rodríguez said. “It’s been really good seeing everybody having fun, seeing everybody getting good at-bats and getting on base and passing the baton, and getting the big hits when we need them.”
No one is getting more of those hits than Rodríguez right now. He extended his hitting streak to a career-high 13 games and left the park for the third game in a row. During his streak, Rodríguez is batting .516 (32-for-62) with five homers, six doubles and 21 RBIs.
In his past 10 games, Rodríguez has 28 hits, the most by any player in a 10-game stretch since Kenny Lofton had 28 from April 10 to April 22 in 1997. That includes five games of at least four hits.
According to Elias Sports Bureau research, Rodríguez is the only player since 1900 with five four-hit games in a 10-game span.
“What we’re watching, really, it’s historical,” Seattle manager Scott Servais said. “As crazy to say that for a player that is that young, but to do what he is doing and for the span he’s done it for now … that’s ridiculous.”
With his four hits Monday, Rodríguez now has 153 on the season, passing Toronto Blue Jays’ Bo Bichette for the AL lead.
Seattle scored at least six runs for the 12th time in 18 games, and while most of the lineup contributed, it was the top of the order doing the majority of the damage against the lowly Athletics.
Rodríguez scorched a 112 mph double in the third inning to score J.P. Crawford all the way from first base and hit his 24th long ball, a 420-foot drive in the fourth inning. To finish it off, he used his speed as well, beating out a pair of infield grounders for hits in the sixth and eighth.
“I wish I could run as fast as Julio Rodríguez. This has got to be a really fun game when you’re that fast,” Servais joked.
Monday marked the second time in the past 12 days that Rodríguez had a four-hit game with two extra-base hits and two infield hits. He is the only player with multiple such games in a year over the past 20 seasons, and the only Mariners player with even one such game over that period.
Seattle won 20 games in a month for the seventh time, the first since the 2001 season when the Mariners won a record-tying 116 games. Seattle won 20 games in a month four times that season under Lou Piniella.
