Julio Rodríguez homers twice as Mariners end losing streak in Atlanta

Ryan Divish, The Seattle Times on Sep 6, 2025

Published in Baseball

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ATLANTA — The complaints about his frustratingly slow start to every season remain valid based on empirical data. The expectations for even more production with some consistency will continue to be demanded — it’s something he wants as well. And the narrative that Julio Rodríguez never comes through in clutch situations? Well, that’s something he’s working to disprove.

The Mariners’ now familiar trend toward finding failure on the road started to build in the later innings on Saturday night. They’d lost the two-run lead Rodríguez had provided with his 29th homer of the season in the first inning. They also somehow failed to capitalize on seven walks handed out by Braves pitching over the first six innings.

But Rodríguez, who has been the Mariners’ best hitter since the All-Star break, made sure they wouldn’t lose a fifth straight game on this road trip. And he did so in preposterous fashion.

With Randy Arozarena on second base in the top of the seventh of a tie game, Rodríguez lashed at a 97-mph fastball from Atlanta reliever Daysbel Hernández on a 3-2 count. It produced a low line drive that started to climb as it kept carrying.

The ball, which exited his bat 113.5 mph at a 21-degree launch angle, rocketed over the wall in center field, splashing into the water fall roughly 30 feet behind the 400-foot sign. Rodríguez’s 30th homer of the season gave the Mariners an emotional lift and a two-run lead they would continue to add to in what would be much-needed 10-2 defeat of the Braves.

Rodríguez has now hit 110 home runs in his first four seasons as a big leaguer. And while he has hit longer homers in his career — MLB Statcast had the blast at 441 feet — and he’s hit more than a few in high-leverage situations, the homer off Hernández was absolutely critical for a reeling Mariners team.

The homer seemed to open a dam of hits and runs that had been welling on this road trip. With two outs in the inning, Eugenio Suárez hit a solo homer to left to make it 5-2 and put an end to Hernández’s outing. The Braves right-hander had allowed only one homer this season and two the last two seasons (58 innings pitched).

The Mariners greeted Hernández’s replacement, Hayden Harris, with more hits. Jorge Polanco doubled to left field and scored on J.P. Crawford’s single to left-center to make it 6-2.

In the eighth inning, Josh Naylor hit a three-run homer to make it 9-2.

And not wanting to be left out of the home-run hitting party, Cal Raleigh launched home run No. 52 — a solo bomb in the ninth inning off the Chop House restaurant in right field.

The Mariners got a solid, if not lengthy, start from Bryce Miller, who worked 5 1/3 innings, allowing two runs on five hits with two walks and three strikeouts.

Miller retired nine of the first 10 batters he faced. His first run allowed came in somewhat impressive fashion in the fourth inning. A misplaced split-finger fastball to Matt Olson was turned into a 459-foot solo homer to deep right-center.

After working out of trouble in the fourth and fifth, stranding the tying run in scoring position both innings, Miller didn’t make it out of the sixth inning. He allowed back-to-back, one-out singles to Ozzie Albies and Ha-Seong Kim and walked Ronald Acuna to load the bases. Manager Dan Wilson went to Gabe Speier to clean up the mess. Speier gave up a deep fly-ball to Michael Harris II that allowed Albies to tag up and score the tying run.

Making his eighth career start for the Braves, rookie right-hander Hurston Waldrep came into his outing having posted a 4-0 record and 1.08 ERA in his last five starts and one long-relief appearance.

The Mariners got to him immediately and probably should’ve done more damage. After Raleigh worked a one-out walk in the top of the first, Rodríguez jumped on an 0-2 split-finger fastball that stayed on the inner half of the plate. The two-run blast was a rocket off the facing of the upper deck in left field.

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