Rain delays WAR, Mariners lose 10-3 to Yankees
The chase continues
Cal Raleigh would not be outdone. The Mariners, on the other hand…
The Mariners lost 10-3 to the Yankees on Tuesday in yet another rain-delayed road game against a team without a roof. Logan Gilbert cruised through the first four innings with an efficiency rarely seen from him in 2025, but he struggled to bounce back after sitting for nearly an hour during the delay. Aaron Judge briefly closed the gap in the home run race with a modest poke into the short porch, but Raleigh quickly answered with a record-setting homer of his own. Both came in garbage time.
Gilbert was nearly perfect through four innings, needing just 51 pitches. It wasn’t the best stuff we’ve seen from him — he leads all starting pitchers in whiff rate and strikeout rate — but the efficiency was refreshing after watching him struggle to pitch deep into games all season. Then a steady rain turned into a heavy pour, and the game was delayed for 35 minutes. Gilbert came back out in the fifth inning, but whatever momentum he’d built was gone. He got an out, then gave up a single and a walk. A soft grounder to shortstop could have ended the inning, but J.P. Crawford’s flip to second wasn’t quick enough to turn two. Another soft grounder to Cole Young could have ended the inning again, but with Young shifted, the ball rolled just out his reach, allowing the first run to score.
Gilbert came back out to begin the sixth: single, single, home run, walk, double — and his night was over. It was 4-0 when Casey Legumina entered the game; it was 10-0 when he left. There were plenty of hits in between, the most notable being Judge’s 34th home run of the season into the short porch in right.
It’s unclear how much the rain delay mattered, which is not the first time I’ve written that this year. The Yankees, like the White Sox and Twins, are among the many teams without a roof. Teams without roofs generally ask their visitors to “hold on just a sec” several times a season. I’m somewhat sympathetic to the roofless, as building one costs money, and that money is usually fronted by taxpayers. But the Yankees’ entire brand is money — they have it, and they want you to know they have it. They’ll give a bunch of it to aging veterans to sit on the injured list; they’ll use it to build a monument to themselves that only they can see; they’ll even invest it in a Hard Rock Cafe to give their fans that authentic New York dining experience. But they won’t build a roof to ensure reasonable playing conditions because of Babe Ruth or bodegas or something like that. Maybe they spent it all on the rights to blast “Just Wanna Rock” a thousand times a game, letting the tired meme echo off their damp, faux-leather seats. At least Jimmy Fallon wasn’t there tonight. I’m sure he’s laughing somewhere.
Anyways, Gilbert snapped the rotation’s scoreless-inning streak at 34. The rotation, which has struggled all year, entered the day averaging nearly six innings pitched over their last 10 outings, with a 2.46 FIP and 63 Game Score.
The pitching wasn’t really the issue on Tuesday. The Mariners offense couldn’t do much against Yankees’ top prospect Will Warren — before the delay or after. Their best chance came in the fifth inning, when J.P. Crawford stepped to the plate with two outs and runners on first and third. He worked a 2-1 count before the umpires delayed the game mid-at-bat; 35 minutes later, Crawford swung at the first pitch he saw and rocketed a grounder to first to end the inning.
In the sixth, a pair of walks brought Luke Raley to the plate with two outs. The Yankees went to their bullpen for a lefty, and Dan Wilson went to his bench for Donovan Solano, who lined out to centerfield. Solano is now 1-for-20 as a pinch hitter. The strategy has not worked for the Mariners this year.
The Mariners finally got on the board in the eighth, with the game already out of reach. Crawford singled to lead off and scored on a 113 mph double from Julio Rodríguez into the left-center gap. That brought Raleigh to the plate, with Judge now on his heels for the home run title. Raleigh got a belt-high slider and crushed it 108 mph at a perfect 28-degree launch angle for his 36th home run of the year. With it, he passed Ken Griffey Jr. for the most homers before the All-Star break in Mariners history.
I’ve been looking forward to this series for a bit now, to watch Raleigh and Judge go head-to-head for a variety of achievements only one of them can win. Tuesday’s game more than delivered, with Raleigh behind the plate calling pitches to keep Judge off the board while the MVP chants rained down.
Judge deserves those chants, of course. He will win AL MVP barring catastrophe. He’s at 7.2 fWAR and on pace for the fifth best season ever; Cal is a distant second with 5.9 fWAR. In the generalizations favored by writers, both seasons will be dubbed “one of the greatest ever” in a few years — the exactness is beside the point, even if it’s the whole point of WAR itself. But the MVP is the one true rubber stamp. It doesn’t feel great to think that Raleigh’s season will go without recognition, beyond the All-Star votes and a Silver Slugger and a variety of time-specific awards and a thousand articles and perhaps even an offense-assisted Gold Glove.
Still, Raleigh has played himself into generational relevance. That’s not a given for a player who debuted at 24 and had his first full season at 25. He’s a bit like Judge in that respect — a late-ish bloomer, blossoming in his prime. Raleigh is now in the “this guy could be a Hall of Famer” discussion that’s generally reserved only for the precocious.
That’s what makes this home run chase so compelling. Raleigh isn't just racing to finish the season with the most home runs in MLB, but toward a legacy-defining threshold. He’s on pace to finish the year with 64 home runs — the most ever in the American League — and the guy chasing him is the one who currently holds the record. It’s the type of achievement that could one day justify him as the greatest catcher ever. Judge inched closer to taking that from him on Tuesday. Raleigh didn’t let him.