Here, in the stretch run of a grueling journey his peers can barely comprehend, Cal Raleigh shot down the idea that he’s accomplishing anything extraordinary.
“Catchers usually are pretty tired at this point in the year,” he said on the phone last week, “but you could say the same thing for everybody.”
Lately, that’s been the standard line from the Seattle Mariners’ star slugger, even though it’s clear that he is not everybody. On Wednesday, he became just the seventh player ever to hit 60 home runs in a single season. He joined an exclusive club that includes Babe Ruth, an impressive enough feat on its own. But within the game Raleigh has drawn another level of admiration. That’s because none of those who came before him have faced a greater degree of difficulty.
Raleigh is the only member of those select few who is a switch hitter, meaning he must deal with the quirks and intricacies of maintaining two swings over the course of a long season. And, even more notably, he is the only player in that class of elite sluggers to ply his trade as a catcher. He reached his latest heights in his AL-leading 120th game behind the plate, the most mentally draining and physically demanding position on the diamond.
No player is more vulnerable to the bumps, bruises, aches and pains that can derail an entire season. Yet, Raleigh has crafted a year for the ages, one that has lifted an entire franchise, assaulted the record books, and added a splash of intrigue to this season’s race for the American League’s Most Valuable Player.
The MLB home run leader has posted 9.1 fWAR, second in the majors behind only Aaron Judge. He has won the Home Run Derby, smashed Salvador Perez’s single-season record for most home runs by a catcher (48) and cruised past Mickey Mantle’s record for most home runs by a switch hitter (54). He has helped his Mariners clinch the American League West for the first time since 2001, and he has put himself back on pace to match Judge’s single-season AL home run record of 62 homers with four games remaining in the regular season.
Raleigh has been the team’s fulcrum, its most dependable and most prolific player. Between the homers and the title and even the T-Mobile commercials, he’s done his best to deflect all the acclaim and attention and “M-V-P” chants that have rained down on him in Seattle.
When asked last week whether he ever envisioned a season like this, Raleigh replied, “I don’t think so. I mean, I just try to be the best I can be.” That night, he eclipsed Mantle’s record.
Three years ago, Raleigh was a burgeoning Seattle folk hero who hit a blast that broke the Mariners’ 21-year playoff drought. “They should’ve, if they haven’t already, given him the keys to the city,” former teammate Robbie Ray said this summer.
Now Raleigh has become a full-fledged superstar, the aww-shucks son of a college coach who perfects two swings between meetings with pitchers and acts like it’s no big deal.
Others in the game will tell you otherwise. They say over and over that what Raleigh is doing as a catcher is special, unprecedented, worthy of both praise and end-of-season hardware.
The Big Dumper is, indeed, a big deal.
“I’ll show you how tough it is – look how many times it’s been done,” Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy, a former major league catcher, said of Raleigh’s season. “It’s pretty incredible what he’s done. He’s a workhorse. It’s kind of an old-school thing. You look at Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk and those guys. I’m sure he’s been beat up at times, too. Foul tips and things that go with catching every day. And to be able to do what he’s doing, it’s really incredible.”
Raleigh’s team is hurtling toward securing one of the top seeds in the postseason and his name could yet again be etched in history. If Raleigh won’t indulge in the spectacle of his season, allow those he admires to do the campaigning for him.
“I think he’s the MVP of the American League,” said Perez, the Kansas City Royals’ All-Star backstop. “I have a lot of respect for Aaron Judge and I know he’s a good hitter, too, but to be a catcher and prepare the game plan, help the pitcher, catch well, throw well and hit 50-plus homers? Ha!”
On a Friday afternoon in Cleveland in late August, the instruments behind one of baseball’s most diligent routines sat there in plain sight. Two catcher’s mitts occupied a wooden shelf, one for breaking in, one for the games. A scouting printout for the night’s opponent rested neatly below Raleigh’s game day apparel. And leaning against the locker were four bats – two crafted for his right-handed swing, two built especially for his left-handed swing.
Raleigh is known to arrive at home games hours before most of his teammates. “Especially on the first day of the series, there’s usually a lot going on,” Raleigh said.
There are swings and game prep, work on receiving and also work in the training room to make sure his body can keep meeting the demands of this grind.
This season, Raleigh has been focusing his work off a high tee– a way to make sure he’s moving vertically through his swing rather than drifting away from the ball. That means swings from the left, then swings from the right.
The routine has paid off. Raleigh has hit more home runs right-handed (22) this year than at any point in his major-league career. And on Wednesday, he hit his 37th and 38th from the left side. For context: Only seven major leaguers have hit even 38 homers this year; Raleigh is the only one of the group digging into both sides of the batter’s box.
“It’s a lot of work to take care of two swings,” teammate Eugenio Suárez said.
Raleigh also plays a position that requires perhaps the most mental acuity in the sport. He manages a pitching staff that leads its league in strikeouts, something it couldn’t do without his expert guidance.
Raleigh, who signed a six-year contract extension worth $105 million before the season, has appeared in all but three of Seattle’s games this season. He ranks third in the majors in innings behind the plate. He ranked first last year, when he won the American League Platinum Glove award.
Raleigh has hardly slowed. He’s slugged 10 home runs and has an OPS over 1.000 in September. And while he downplays the level of physical and mental exhaustion he’s experiencing, those who have squatted behind the plate and called pitches and absorbed foul tips every day for six months do not.
How must Raleigh really be feeling? How is any catcher feeling near the finish line?
“Like you’ve been in a fight for the last six months,” said Guardians manager Stephen Vogt, a former big league catcher. “It’s the mystery bruise game. You wake up and you can’t remember where it came from. Your legs are jello. Your body just aches. It hurts.”
Sandy Alomar Jr. can relate to a catcher enjoying a season in which he can do no wrong. In 1997, Alomar never slumped. He had a 30-game hitting streak. He hit the game-winning home run to capture All-Star Game MVP honors in front of his home crowd in Cleveland. He saved the Indians’ season with a game-tying homer off Mariano Rivera in Game 4 of the ALDS. He finished with a career-high 21 homers, plus five more in the postseason. He logged a .324 average and a .900 OPS.
All of that makes what Raleigh has done that much more impressive to Alomar, a six-time All-Star, a Rookie of the Year winner and the owner of a Gold Glove Award.
“What he’s doing is extremely ridiculous,” Alomar said. “That many home runs as a catcher is hard to do. In the second half, I was getting tired.”
All across baseball, Raleigh’s historic season has left many other former and current catchers in awe.
“He’s had a tremendous season,” Toronto Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk said in Spanish, in the same Truist Park clubhouse Raleigh occupied during the All-Star Game in Atlanta this summer. “And as a catcher, you feel good that someone at your position is doing what he’s doing.”
“I think there should be a great appreciation for what he’s doing just because of the position,” said the Philadelphia Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber, who came up as a catcher before the Chicago Cubs bailed on the experiment.
Other players are aware of the demands. But only the people who have done it can truly understand the toll it can take.
“Once you catch every day and you get about 30-40 under your belt, your body becomes kind of numb,” Detroit Tigers catcher Jake Rogers said. “You get really tired, but you don’t really feel like it. You feel like you can go forever. You get in the routine of things and you’re like, ‘OK, this is not that bad.’ And then at the end of the year, you’re like, ‘I’m the most tired I’ve ever been in my entire life.’”
Ahead of the 2024 season, Raleigh worked with Cleveland catcher Austin Hedges in Phoenix on his receiving, blocking and framing. At the end of the season, Raleigh won the Platinum Glove. His defense has not been at the same elite level this season but it remains strong by many measures. He has saved seven runs above average with his pitch framing and grades out at two runs above average with his arm. He hasn’t been charged with a single passed ball.
No catcher has spent more innings behind the plate the past two seasons.
Raleigh’s 9.1 fWAR is a total only three catchers have previously reached: Johnny Bench in 1972, Mike Piazza in 1997 and Buster Posey in 2012. Posey and Bench each won MVP in their respective seasons.
“Every inning you catch is making you a worse hitter,” Hedges said. “You don’t have your legs. You’re thinking a lot. You’re mentally exhausted. There are so many things that are taking away how hard hitting is, or at least challenging that. And for him to go out and play literally every single day and his off-days are DH days — he doesn’t get a day to just stop thinking about game-calling — it’s really, really special. For me, he’s MVP.”
Raleigh and Judge, who on Wednesday became the fourth player to hit at least 50 home runs in four seasons, will create fierce debates in what could be a tight race for the American League’s MVP award.
Judge’s numbers for the New York Yankees are historic in their own right, and his OPS is .177 above Raleigh. But to many who have worn the gear and donned the mask, the man who just stunned baseball with his 60th home run should win the MVP for a simple reason.
He’s a catcher, and no one has ever seen a season like this before.
“We’re talking about one of the greatest seasons any player’s ever had, given all of the intangibles, all the things that you have to do,” Hedges said. “I am proud. I’m sure all of us are proud. Just being like, ‘That’s possible?’”
The Athletic’s Maria Torres contributed reporting to this story.