Cal Raleigh is doing things that no Seattle Mariner and no catcher has ever done before, but is that enough to knock off Aaron Judge for American League MVP?
Raleigh hit his 60th home run on Wednesday to become the seventh player in baseball history, and the first catcher, to hit 60 in a season. This came days after he broke the Mariners single-season home run mark, which was held by the legendary Ken Griffey Jr. Oh, and Raleigh reached 60 home runs in a two-home-run night as part of a Mariners win that clinched the club’s first American League West title since 2001.
Even with all of that, there’s still debate as to who will win the AL MVP between Raleigh and New York Yankees star Aaron Judge. With four games left, Raleigh has a chance to catch or surpass Judge’s AL record of 62 home runs in a season, accomplished in 2022. Surely, all of that should be enough, right? Well …
For one, Judge is also having a monster year. Judge leads the majors in batting average at .328 (Remember when people were betting on him to hit .400? Oops.), on-base percentage (.455), slugging percentage (.681) and WAR (9.3). That was good enough for Judge to be favored to win MVP throughout the season, including as recently as yesterday.
Judge was -650 on BetMGM to win MVP on Sept. 17. Before Wednesday’s games, that shifted to -120 (with Raleigh at -110).
After Raleigh hit 60 home runs and the Mariners clinched, Raleigh became the clear favorite at -210, implying Raleigh has a roughly two-thirds chance of winning the award. Judge is now +155.
Any award that is based on votes is going to be narrative-driven, and Raleigh has a strong narrative going for him. A catcher leading his team to its first division title in 24 years, while being the first backstop to ever hit 60 home runs in a season, and having an infamous nickname (Big Dumper), has turned him into a sensation. Plus, Judge has already won MVP twice, including last year, so voter fatigue could be at play when debating between these two.
Raleigh is only hitting .248, but 60 home runs and an AL-leading 125 RBIs are strong for an MVP resume. With 60-home run seasons being so rare, one would think that makes him a lock for MVP, right?
Even though the 60-home-run season is a baseball rarity, it hasn’t ensured the player wins MVP. Of the nine previous 60-home-run seasons, only four won MVP.
That stat is slightly misleading, though, because Babe Ruth, the first to hit 60 home runs in a season, wasn’t eligible in 1927 (players could only win AL MVP once back then, and he had already won it in 1923). On top of that, two others (Mark McGwire in 1998 and Sammy Sosa in 2001) lost to another player who also hit 60-plus home runs. The outlier is 1999, when McGwire and Sosa both topped 60 home runs, but did so on bad teams, and Chipper Jones won MVP.
Raleigh would be the first eligible player to not win MVP with at least 60 home runs in a season as part of a team that made the playoffs. The odds now reflect that, even though Judge has 51 home runs and leads all three major slash categories.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.