Cal Raleigh continues unprecedented run in 9-4 win over Cubs

In the Windy City, Mariners channel Chicago icon Oprah Winfrey: You get a home run, and you get a home run, everybody gets a home run

From the inception of the All-Star Game in 1933 until this year, no catcher had ever hit more than Johnny Bench’s 28 home runs before the All-Star break. But Cal Raleigh is on a mission to destroy every catcher record available this season, and he didn’t even wait for a second pitch today before tying that record.

Unfortunately, that was all the Mariners could get going in the first inning, so when George Kirby pitched the bottom half of the inning lacking his typical sharpness, it was hard to feel good about Cal’s accomplishment. Kirby fell behind leadoff hitter Ian Happ 2-0 and then sent a fastball right down broadway, as middle-middle as I’ve ever seen a pitch, and Happ did what you’re supposed to do with those pitches to tie the game 1-1. Three hits later, the Cubs had taken the lead 3-1. The second inning made that look like a hiccup for Kirby, as his command improved significantly and the results with it.

But it didn’t last. Kirby eventually found a middle ground, often catching too much of the plate, but otherwise wiggling around the zone to retire batters without the swing-and-miss or dots on the corner that make him a great pitcher. A fifth-inning home run from backup catcher Reese McGuire was the only other run he’d let score over five innings of work. But Kirby pitched yet another game where he looked rusty, with his dominant performance against the weak Angels lineup looking like an aberration in what’s otherwise been a ho-hum first month back from his shoulder injury.

The thing about what Cal Raleigh’s doing, though, is that a ho-hum pitching performance is often good enough for the Mariners to pull out a win. In the fourth inning, Cal stole second base without a throw, so was able to score on a Donovan Solano single. Thus, once the Mariners chased Cubs starter Matthew Boyd after five innings, they were only down 4-2 and ready to pounce on former-Astro Ryan Pressley. Randy Arozarena started things off with a ringing double, and then Mitch Garver hit a dinger to tie the game up.

Yes, you’ve read that correctly. Three of the Mariners’ first four RBI came from Donovan Solano and Mitch Garver. Before today’s game, the Mariners made a roster move to reactivate Luke Raley from the Injured List. To clear space on the active roster for him, they finally cut bait on the lefty-swinging first baseman, Rowdy Tellez, rather than demote Dominic Canzone back to Tacoma. I doubt things are as simple as the marginal players on the roster feeling their seats get warm, but Solano and Garver each played their best game all year today. Solano’s RBI hit was one of four times he reached base today, including a double. And he helped out the pitchers with what I counted as five plus-defense plays in the field, including two unassisted double plays. Garver, of course, had that game-tying home run, his first big fly of the season that wasn’t hit off a position player.

For the seventh inning, Chicago tried to keep the game tied by bringing in lefty Caleb Thielbar to face Cole Young and J.P. Crawford, who were indeed quickly dispatched with uninspiring plate appearances. But the three-batter minimum meant Thielbar would have to face the right-handed Julio, who was able to get a single. And you can’t get the platoon advantage against Cal Raleigh because he’s a switch hitter. Maybe you just can’t get any advantage against Cal Raleigh, as he hit his 29th home run of the year, passing Bench. Having moved past the “for a catcher” label, he’s now chasing the “for a switch-hitter” one, with his 29 homers before the All-Star Break second to Mickey Mantle’s 34. For the record, the All-Star break is still four weeks away.

When the Mariners got back in the field, Raley made a spectacular diving play in his second inning of defense. That followed his pinch-hit double in his first plate appearance back from the IL. That combination gave us the full Luke Raley experience in roughly 20 minutes. It was a potent reminder of why he’s such a joy to watch, playing baseball the way Meg White plays the drums, with that unconstrained, animalistic vigor. And it gets him today’s Sun Hat Award for a notable individual contribution to a game.

Up by two runs in the ninth, Cal added a single to his day, seemingly just for fun. Randy Arozarena did the same, to bring Mitch Garver back up, who put the game away with a three-run bing bong. Once again, I don’t think it’s as simple as Rowdy’s departure kicking Garver and Solano into gear. I’m just saying that if that is something that happened, I’m not sure anything about today’s game would look different.

But even with a two-dinger day from Garver, a resurgent day from Solano, and a welcome-back from Raley, the star today was Raleigh. That little ninth-inning single would make it a three hit day for Cal, with two home runs, plus a stolen base, and catching five different pitchers over nine innings. It brings him up to a wRC+ of 188 and 4.8 fWAR. That’s about as close to Aaron Judge in first place as it is far from Pete Crow-Armstrong (who was held hitless, with three pop-fouls today) in third.

As far as that difference goes, Cal is 37 points behind Judge by wRC+. But wRC+ is a results-based stat and does not account for contact quality. That’s what xwOBA is supposed to do, but I don’t love that as a fix here because (a) xwOBA does not account for launch direction (i.e., pull/straight/oppo), which matters in this case because that’s an aspect of the game where Cal really stands out as an actual skill, and (b) xwOBA has generally been a little wonky this year. The big thing that’s been a bee in my bonnet in comparing the two is Judge’s .449 BABIP. I know that Cal also has a career-high BABIP this year and that, because of their different speeds and batted-ball profiles, Judge will have a structurally higher BABIP than Cal. Still, I wanted to do a quick-and-dirty stress-test how much of the difference between them is based on that preposterous mark from Judge. To do that, I reallocated each ball in play as it would be if Cal and Judge were each at their career BABIP this season. Among the reduced number of hits, I allocated them among singles, doubles, and triples according to the same proportion as their 2025 hits. Then I recalculated their slash lines. Accounting for park factors correctly is too much work for an exercise like this while I’m trying to get a recap up. But again, we’re quick-and-dirty, so I weighted 50% of each part of their slash line according to their home stadium’s park factor and left the other 50% alone. Then I re-recalculated their slash lines, and this is the result: Cal would be hitting .241/.359/.616 and Judge would be at .320/.425/.669. That’s .119 points of OPS, which is less than their unadjusted difference of .170. As a back-of-the-envelope thing, we get basically .50 points of OPS accounted for by the absurdity of Judge’s BABIP. Even if that were actually the right way to look at it, I don’t think the gap between them would be quite narrow enough to be overcome by the difference in their defense. But it would make it a conversation.