Julio Rodriguez isn’t interested in speaking to me.



At least, not in Spanish.



The 17-year-old, who signed with the Mariners out of the Dominican Republic in July 2017 for $1.75 million, spent a brief summer at the Mariners’ DR academy playing with other Spanish-speaking prospects in the Dominican Summer League. He was the team MVP after leading the them in almost every offensive category and finished as a DSL All-Star.



This fall, Rodriguez spent about two-and-a-half months at the team facility in Arizona participating in the Mariners’ high-performance camp, this time with a mix of international signees and U.S.-born ones. As Corey Brock detailed earlier this month, the camp focuses less on baseball skills and more on conditioning, nutrition, mental skills and life skills, like English lessons for the non-native speakers. And in case you were wondering, no, Rodriguez didn’t experience any of the kind of anti-Latino bias – and...