THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: If Julio heats up, so might the Mariners

Hey, the Mariners made a pretty slick move for that Rodriguez guy. 

Four hits and a homer in his first night with the club? 

Got to call it a heckuva deal for Jerry Dipoto, Justin Hollander and the club’s scouting crew. 

I can’t even tell you who went the other way in Seattle’s first big shakeup before the trade deadline. 

OK, Seriously. 

Scouts, executives and personnel people around MLB have been saying for months that the Mariners would be a completely different team with Julio Rodriguez swinging the bat like … oh, I don’t know. 

Julio Rodriguez? 

It’s amazing what one electric, all-around star can do for a team if most of the other pieces are more or less in place. 

It’s not quite like the impact of Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson in the NFL, because those guys handle the ball on every offensive play. 

But the baseball fire that runs through an entire team is closer to those megastar quarterbacks than you think. 

How can that be? 

Simple. 

If a player like Julio is lighting up a stadium every night, you feel it. 

Even way up in the Bob Uecker seats, you feel the goosebumps. 

On the field, you feel it with every heartbeat. 

And believe me, brothers and sisters, it can change everything about a game. 

YEP, EVEN one single game out of 162.  

Get a win, and the guys get to turn that clubhouse music up to 14, peeling paint off the walls. 

“Rock it, my man,” somebody screams, “and I ain’t believin’ a single to center could be 125 mph. No way.  

“Yeeoow!!” 

Listen, I’ve covered more MLB games that we could even count, and for the longest time they were just entries in a scorebook. 

Interviews with the big boy who hit the hanging slider to win it. 

Yada, yada. 

Somewhere along the line, though, I started to grasp that — for two or three hours — there’s a tingle on every pitch, and even the right fielder’s adrenaline hits a spike. 

Those feelings are part of the gig. 

But you can go beyond that. 

Add in the thunder and lightning of a superstar, one of those rare creatures who somehow can make it feel like the end of the world — even on a sunny day.  

“You know, your job out there is to think about the hitter coming up, where you want to pitch him, what’s the score and state of the game,” said John Smoltz, Hall of Famer both as a rotation ace and then as a dominant closer. 

“It’s him and you, what do you need to throw? I felt that way with every hitter depending on the situation, and went through my routine — except with Barry Bonds. 

“BARRY would give you a little smile, because he knew he was better than you, and he knew that YOU knew it, too. 

“So, I gave up some rockets to him (nine, tied with Greg Maddux times for most by Bonds), just like everybody else did, and I walked him a thousand times. 

“But the thing with Barry is that you wanted the at-bat to be done, whatever happened, because the longer he stood up there, the more the crowd got into it. 

“Besides that, you could feel the other hitters getting into it, like some ceremony where they’re going to boil you in oil at the end.” 

Every “sane” pitcher, Smoltz said, wanted Bonds’ at-bats to finish in a hurry, even if he hit one 600 feet.  

“You don’t want everybody else getting in on the party,” he said.  

Can you see were we’re going with this story? 

Let’s say Julio comes back from his couple of days off and really starts to rake. 

If he cooks like the second half of last year. 

If. 

If Julio finds his talent, maybe a few more of the slumping Mariners would light it up with along with their star, and get it all going. 

It happened last year. 

Eugenio Suarez (22 HR, 96 RBI), Teoscar Hernandez (26, 93) and Julio (32, 103) finished second, third and ninth in strikeouts throughout MLB in 2023. 

“Sometimes you can live with the strikeouts if they’re doing damage,” manager Scott Servais said. 

“Those guys, it spoke for itself. You know, people said Geno (Suarez) had a down year, but there was nobody I wanted up there more when we had to get the bat on the ball. 

“Nobody.” 

Bottom line: No guarantees here, but if Julio and Cal Raleigh (and maybe Luke Raley) begin to feed off one another, things could actually brighten up.

Hey, gloomier doesn’t seem possible. 

Email: [email protected] 

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens. 

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”