It's too soon to fret over Mariners' upcoming $240M Julio Rodríguez decision

With the regular season almost two weeks in the past and the proper start of the offseason still weeks away, we're in a dead zone in the Seattle Mariners' news cycle. This means it's "idle hands" time, as in the discourse right now is what the team will do with Julio Rodríguez in two years.

Our hat is off to the Marine Layer Podcast for leading the charge on this, and it is a genuinely interesting topic of conversation. Julio's extremely complex contract faces a crossroads of sorts after the 2028 World Series, when the Mariners will have to decide whether to pick up a club option.

As we covered last year, it's an eight-year option currently valued at $240 million because of Julio's top-10 MVP finishes in 2022, 2023 and 2025. If he has another top-10 finish in 2027 or 2028, the value jumps to $260 million. If he wins an MVP in 2027 or 2028, it becomes $280 million. Back-to-back MVPs? Then it's a 10-year, $350 million option.

The option years wouldn't take effect until after the 2029 season, meaning they would cover at least Julio's age 29-36 seasons. Should the Mariners decline the club option, the ball would then be in Julio's court in the form of a five-year player option that is currently valued at $90 million. He'd presumably decline it, becoming a free agent.

Julio Rodríguez's recent inconsistency is clouding his Mariners future

If we can imagine ourselves three years in the past, then it's easy to find ourselves in a time and place when the Mariners picking up Julio's option after 2028 was going to be a no-brainer. He was excellent in 2022 and 2023, winning the AL Rookie of the Year for the former and finishing in the top 10 in the AL MVP voting for both. He was worth 11.8 rWAR, seventh-best among position players.

Even if his star power hasn't necessarily faded since then, it's at least dimmer than it used to be. His 13.6 rWAR is only tied for 19th among position players since 2024, and the biggest chunk is from his 6.6-rWAR campaign from last year. He was merely good in 2024, and this year he was closer to mediocre. A fifth straight 20-20 season was nice, but he paired it with just a 103 OPS+ and 2.8 rWAR.

The more granular concerns are real. Julio's defense in center field is declining to a degree that is actually alarming. And while he's never had a Votto-ian eye at the plate, his inability to tighten his strike zone is only becoming more of a problem.

The broader story of Julio's career remains one of an excellent young outfielder, as only he and 10 others have accumulated as much as 25 rWAR through the age of 25. Yet once returns start diminishing, there's always a real fear that there will be no recovery. And right now, that fear is there with Julio Rodríguez.

Why it's a safe bet that the Mariners will pick up Julio Rodríguez's option anyway

However, any defense of Julio must begin with giving him grace for what happened this season.

The fact that his production fell dramatically after he suffered a concussion in July naturally makes one wonder if he was 100-percent healthy down the stretch. It's also only in the last month that it's become clear just how dysfunctional the clubhouse was under Dan Wilson. The Mariners aim to fix that in hiring their next manager.

Julio is going to enter 2027 as an obvious rebound candidate, at least on the offensive side. The bat speed is still there, at least, and that plus even slightly improved discipline could get his contact quality metrics back up after they sagged in 2026. It's also possible that his defensive issues will prove to be an outlier. After all, this was the first year that both his DRS and OAA were below average.

If the Mariners must move Julio off center field in the near future, then so be it. It shouldn't be a badge of dishonor for a guy his size (6-foot-4, 228 pounds) to have to move to a corner spot. And if Jonny Farmelo can keep staying healthy, the Mariners will soon have a proper speedster and defensive wiz to put in center anyway.

One way or another, one can easily imagine Julio still being a dynamic star outfielder when the Mariners have their decision to make in 2028. If the question is whether such a player is worth $240 million, it should be an obvious yes.

That figure matches the value of Robinson Canó's record contract with the Mariners, which might make it sound scary. But Canó was past 30 at the time, and this was 13 years ago. The going rate for a star player these days is more like $35 million per year, not $30 million. As the years wind toward 2037, inflation would only make Julio's AAV under the option more reasonable.

If what happened this year proves to be less of a fluke and more of a harbinger, there will need to be serious discussions in the front office about whether the team should decline the option and risk losing Julio. It would be an ending nobody saw coming back in 2022, in a sad way.

For now, though, you can probably assume the Mariners are leaning heavily toward the "yes" side for when 2028 comes.

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