One award down for Cal Raleigh. Potentially many more to come.
The Mariners catcher was named the Sporting News MLB Player of the Year on Friday, becoming just the third player in franchise history to be honored by the publication.
Yankees slugger Aaron Judge finished second in the voting and Shohei Ohtani was third.
Raleigh is just the second catcher to win the award, which has been presented by the Sporting News since 1936, joining Johnny Bench in 1970.
“If it wasn’t the best season that a catcher has ever had, it’s certainly one of the best two,” M’s president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said Thursday. “I don’t know what else he could have done. I do feel like the context in which he did it, from gathering up the homers, from the consistency with which he was producing runs, doing it as a catcher, playing virtually every day – which is a Johnny Bench like thing all by itself is to go out there and post every day as a catcher In today’s game.”
Raleigh’s honor came from the players as the Sporting News collected votes from more than 300 MLB players in deciding who was the best in all of baseball in 2025. Voting was conducted between Sept. 10 and Oct. 10.
He’s the third Mariner to be honored. Alex Rodriguez won the award in 1996 and Ken Griffey Jr. won it in 1997. Griffey was named AL MVP that same season, while Rodriguez – rather controversially – finished second to Texas slugger Juan Gonzalez by just three points in AL MVP voting in 1996.
Raleigh finished the season with 60 home runs, becoming just the seventh player in baseball history to reach that mark. He also drove in 125 runs and caught 1,072 innings, third most in baseball and most in the American League.
In the postseason, Raleigh caught all 113 innings of the playoffs while batting .304 with five homers, eight RBI s and a 1.081 OPS in 12 games.
“I think if there’s one word to describe that year, it’s durability,” M’s manager Dan Wilson said. “To put up the numbers he did as consistently as he did from beginning to end, to catch as much as he did, to block balls as much as he had to this year. You look at all that and it takes a special person to be able to not only withstand that physically, but mentally as well.”
While it’s the first major award of the offseason given to Raleigh, the bigger prize comes next month when the AL MVP award voting is announced. And winning the Sporting News award has not always proved to be an indicator of how the Baseball Writers’ Association of America is going to follow with the MVP ballots.
In recent years, the two entities have lined up. Only once since 2006 has the Sporting News MVP not ended up winning either AL or NL MVP from the BBWAA. That lone exception came in 2016 when Jose Altuve won the Sporting News award but Mike Trout was the AL MVP. Altuve finished third in the voting that season.
But between 1975 and 2005 there were 12 instances where the two awards were not in line with each other, including four times in five seasons between 1999-2003.
Raleigh, and M’s fans, will have to wait until Nov. 13 when the AL MVP is announced.