Wind?

Marine layer?

When you are capable of hitting the ball with as much power as Julio Rodriguez, those things don’t necessarily matter. Just get the ball squarely on the barrel and let physics take over.

With the Mariners trailing by a run, the offense looking ineffectual and another frustrating loss to start the 2025 season looming, he changed it all with one swing in the bottom of the sixth.

Rodriguez took advantage of a first-pitch slider from A’s starter J.P. Sears that hung on the inner half of the plate, sending a majestic blast into the upper deck of left field for his first homer of the season.

His two-run blast provided all the offense necessary in the Mariners’ 2-1 victory over the A’s. Seattle salvaged a split in the season-opening, four-game series.

With a constant and somewhat chilly wind making Sunday afternoon uncomfortable for fans at T-Mobile Park and irritating for hitters by knocking down fly balls to center and right field, Rodriguez drove it to the optimal location.

But when a ball comes off the bat with a 113-mph exit velocity and travels 438 feet, a small tornado isn’t stopping it from being a homer.

“You can’t control where you hit the ball,” Rodriguez said. “Hitting is already difficult. I got a good pitch, got out front and I was able to drive it that way.”

For manager Dan Wilson, Rodriguez’s prolonged discipline to the overall team hitting approach preached by Edgar Martinez was a big part of the result.

“We talk about it a lot with staying to the middle of the field,” Wilson said. “You’ll get your fastball, and you’ll be able to hit that up the middle or the other way, and then the breaking ball that’s out front, you’ll catch it early and hit that ball a long way to the pull side. And that’s what Julio did.”

Somewhat lost in the majesty and celebration of Rodriguez’s mammoth blast was the extended at-bat from Victor Robles that put the tying run on base.

The Mariners leadoff hitter, who led off the game with an infield single, forced a 3-2 count and beat out a ground ball to shortstop Jacob Wilson to bring Rodriguez to the plate as the go-ahead run. Seattle had only five hits as a team and Robles had two of them.

“That’s what he does,” Rodriguez said. “He’s always going to put a great at-bat for us. He’s just diverse. He’s an eventful at-bat every time.”

With the exception of that one misplaced slider, Sears was dominant in his first start. He pitched 6 2/3 innings, allowing five hits with no walks and seven strikeouts. The Mariners had just two runners over the first five innings.

Making his first start of the season and his first MLB start in the month of April, Bryan Woo gave the Mariners a quality start and picked up the win. Relying heavily on his two-seam and four-seam fastballs, he pitched six strong innings, allowing one run on three hits with two walks and five strikeouts to get the win.

His only mistake came in the fourth inning when he threw back-to-back change-ups to start the at-bat against Tyler Soderstrom. The second one stayed in the middle of the zone, allowing Soderstrom to pull it over the wall in left field for a 1-0 lead. It was Soderstrom’s third homer of the series — all solo homers.

“When they’re on, like they were today, I think you continue to trust them,” Woo said of his fastballs. “They set up other pitches. I didn’t do as good of a job with the off-speeds today of trusting them and getting to their spots. The homer was unfortunate, but you just continue to attack and get ahead with the fastballs and it opens a lot of other options.”

With a one-run lead, Dan Wilson turned to his bullpen to cover the final three innings. Right-hander Gregory Santos worked a 1-2-3 seventh inning, getting three ground-ball outs.

With the top of the order looming in the eighth, Wilson didn’t go to Andrés Muñoz to face the likes of Lawrence Butler and Brent Rooker. Right-hander Trent Thornton, who gave up a solo homer in his first outing this season, got the call. When he walked pinch-hitter Seth Brown to start the eighth, catastrophe seemed possible. Instead, Thornton struck out Butler, got Rooker to fly out to center and ended the inning by getting JJ Bleday to ground out to second.

“We talk about high leverage and that was high leverage,” Wilson said. “You are trying to get it to your closer in the ninth, and he was able to do it and he had to get a couple lefties in the process. He did a really nice job.”

Muñoz notched his second save of the season, pitching a scoreless ninth despite allowing a one-out single to Soderstrom.