By the time Ken Griffey, Jr.’s fourth MLB season was behind him, the Mariners’ center fielder may have had to build an addition onto whatever space had been erected to display the signifiers of excellence and prominence: three Gold Gloves; a Silver Slugger; three All-Star nods as a starter for the Junior Circuit. Beyond those merits, Griffey had wowed and terrorized pitchers and propped up his team enough to warrant one top-10 finish in MVP balloting and a third-place slot in Rookie of the Year voting. There was a trio of 20-homer seasons, there was a serious flirtation with a .300/.400/.500 campaign, there was an All-Star MVP, there was a building body of work that if it hadn’t yet reached the spectacular, was pointing without hesitation or interruption or any squiggly-ness in that direction. An immortal career was in its infancy, appropriate for a ballplayer who reached the bigs barely four months past his 19th birthday.
Even though he played his last game for the Mariners in 2010, the first ballot Hall of Famer, in a way, has been a part of the building narrative coming out of Seattle this season – a co-opted link to the historic bash-fullness of the 2025 club’s catcher, Cal Raleigh. Entering this year, Griffey could claim the five highest home run tallies in the franchise’s history: a pair of 56-bomb lines in back-to-back years (in 1997 and 1998), 49 in 1996, 48 in 1999, 45 in 1993 (his first sit-with-the-gods season, in his fifth year). Now, with a couple of weeks remaining before the postseason, he no longer monopolizes the run of one through five, yielding the third spot to Raleigh and his 53; there’s a chance that when September 28 comes to a close, the man who firmly, decisively, thrillingly planted Seattle on the must-watch baseball map will no longer be the franchise’s single-season home run king. The nice symmetry of the franchise’s most productive (at least by bWAR) player having that particular belt aside, it’s not that much of a scratch on Griffey’s legacy, for the shadow he casts on baseball in Seattle is immense and everlasting.
To a large degree, that acknowledgment is why it’s so compelling to look at one of Griffey’s franchise successors in center field, 24-year-old Julio Rodríguez. The 2022 Rookie of the Year and three-time All-Star is winding things down on his fourth Major League season, and apart from his rather minimal interest in taking walks, Rodríguez’s accumulated counting-stat numbers through four seasons decisively mirror Griffey’s at that stage. Here’s how the two stand.
| Player | Games | HR | XBH | TB | RBI | BB | oWAR | dWAR | bWAR |
| Ken Griffey, Jr. | 578 | 87 | 231 | 1,069 | 344 | 222 | 20.8 | 2.1 | 21.4 |
| Julio Rodríguez | 577 | 110 | 225 | 1,096 | 335 | 161 | 21.0 | 2.7 | 22.0 |
There are differences, for sure. Griffey’s slash line and adjusted OPS+ all cruise at an altitude above Rodríguez’s, and perhaps most crucially, Rodriguez was two years older (give or take) than Griffey for their respective debuts. Still, the pairing, by a lot of numbers, links one of the all-time greats in his formative seasons with another who, early on, has already built something beyond intriguing. Same position, same team representation; a brilliant, 10,000-watt showcase from the past meeting an alluring exhibition in the present. It’s these kinds of intersections that add layers to the National Pastime, that help it remain animated and fulfilling.
This recognition of similarities between the two generations of Mariners center fielders came about sort of accidentally, a byproduct of wanting to explore how Rodríguez’s first four years compared to all others when focused on calculated value – in this case, Baseball’s Reference’s WAR. It’s not much of a spoiler to reveal that he shows quite nicely. For all position players, Rodríguez currently occupies the 26th highest slot, just behind Francisco Lindor (22.2) and a pair of immortals, Oscar Charleston and Cal Ripken, Jr. (at 22.3 and 22.4, respectively).
If the urge to bring age into the mix is too much to ignore, Rodríguez rises up to the 15th spot. This spotlight on all position players through their first four seasons, among those whose fourth season came no later than in an age-24 campaign, shows these 14 ahead of him (just the names suffice, for they need nothing else to paint a picture): Ted Williams, Albert Pujols, Mike Trout, Arky Vaughan, Joe DiMaggio, Eddie Mathews, Mookie Betts, Stan Musial, Barry Bonds, Frank Robinson, Henry Aaron, Dick Allen, Cal Ripken, Jr. and Francisco Lindor. That’s nine Hall of Famers, one retired player who’ll go in on his first ballot, three active stars, and Barry Bonds … all leading to Rodriguez, who in turn is just ahead of another Hall of Famer, some guy named Ken Griffey, Jr.
The same sort of bedazzled, charmed company surrounds Rodríguez when it comes to looking at center fielders. Here, the top-10 is also littered with names that conjure a desire to inject superlatives into the conversation.
Highest bWAR Through First 4 Seasons, Players with at Least 50% of Their Games in CF
27.6 Mike Trout (age-19-22 seasons)
27.1 Joe DiMaggio (21-24)
22.3 Oscar Charleston (23-26)
22.0 Julio Rodríguez (21-24)
21.5 Kenny Lofton (24-27)
21.4 Ken Griffey, Jr. (19-22)
20.9 Wally Berger (24-27)
20.6 Mickey Mantle (19-22)
20.2 Tommy Holmes (25-28)
20.1 Earl Averill (27-30)
Positional lineages have a special role in mythologizing both the franchises and the players themselves. The Braves having both Eddie Mathews and Chipper Jones at the hot corner. The Yankees with Earle Combs, DiMaggio and Mantle and Bernie Williams in center or Bill Dickey, Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, Thurman Munson and Jorge Posada behind the plate. The Red Sox with Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice and Manny Ramírez in left; the Giants at first (Roger Connor, Bill Terry, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Will Clark), the Astros at second (Joe Morgan, Craig Biggio, Jose Altuve), and on and on. Griffey’s fifth through 11th seasons (1993-1999) witnessed a momentous leap, the ascent where the legend was ecstatically set and grown. Big steps to follow for sure, but Rodríguez, so far, has traced the path. Maybe someday, in the pairing of Julio Rodríguez and Ken Griffey, Jr., the Mariners will have their own twin wonders.
Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.
Roger Schlueter
As Sr. Editorial Director for Major League Baseball Productions from 2004-2015, Roger served as a hub for hundreds of hours of films, series, documentaries and features: as researcher, fact-checker, script doctor, and developer of ideas. The years at MLB Production gave him the ideal platform to pursue what galvanized him the most – the idea that so much of what takes place on the field during the MLB regular and postseason (and is forever beautifully condensed into a box score) has connections to what has come before. Unearthing and celebrating these webs allows baseball to thrive, for the present can come alive and also reignite the past.