The Seattle Mariners just got Cal Raleigh back. And almost immediately, they lost Julio Rodriguez. That’s baseball, right? But this one feels a little different.
Rodriguez pulled up with a hamstring injury during Wednesday’s 5-3 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. It happened in the sixth inning when he made a running, jumping catch to rob Adley Rutschman of extra bases. He finished the play but didn’t finish the game. Manager Dan Wilson pulled him out, and later called the 25-year-old center fielder “day-to-day.”
“We thought it best, given what we’ve got going on right now in terms of injuries, that it was smart to get him out of there and give it a little bit of a rest,” Wilson told MLB.com. “It’s something that we just wanted to be careful with, and we’ll see how he is tomorrow.”
Seattle is already banged up. J.P. Crawford just returned from the injured list, but the injury bug hasn’t stopped biting. Wilson acknowledged the timing stinks. “It seems to have happened kind of simultaneously here with us, with a lot of different guys,” he said. “But that’s just the way the game is sometimes, and we’re battling through it.”
Moving well, but for how long?
Rodriguez didn’t play Thursday, but the early reports are cautiously optimistic. According to Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times, Rodriguez was seen running with trainers and was described as “moving well.” That’s good. But hamstrings are tricky. They can linger, or they can pop again when you least expect it.
So far this season, Rodriguez is hitting .249 with 13 home runs and 35 RBIs in 75 games. Not quite the MVP-level production he flashed in 2023, but he’s still the guy Seattle built its lineup around. Losing him for any extended stretch would be brutal for a team already fighting to stay in the AL West race.
The Mariners are right to be careful here. They can’t afford to lose Rodriguez for a month because they rushed him back for one series. The team hasn’t given a timeline yet, but all signs point to him missing at least a few days. Maybe more. That’s a scary sentence for Seattle fans.
At this point, the best news is that Rodriguez was moving well enough to run with trainers. The worst news is that nobody knows what happens tomorrow.
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