FanPost Friday: Have a week, Cal Raleigh!
It’s Cal’s world and we’re all just lucky to be living in it
Hello and welcome back to FanPost Friday. Cal Raleigh had one of the best weeks an MLB catcher could possibly had and let me remind you, because sometimes it’s hard to believe, but yes, Cal Raleigh is a Seattle Mariner. A homegrown catching prospect who signed a nice contract extension with the team earlier this year and will be a Mariner for the foreseeable future. He’s Our Guy.
Our Guy won the Home Run Derby this week. It’s the first time a catcher has ever done so and he’s only the second Mariners player to win it. During the All-Star Game, he was mic’d up while catching and he dropped an f-bomb on live TV when Shohei Ohtani poked a Tarik Skubal slider into center field. Cal’s father pitched to him during the derby and his younger brother was the catcher and Cal’s number one hype man. Cal hit a single in his first All-Star Game appearance. Cal made more history by using the trial ABS strike challenge system to correctly challenge a call, which had never been done in an All-Star Game. The video of Cal as a child proclaiming himself to be “the Home Run Derby champ” will be played in every Cal Raleigh career highlights package ever made. He appeared in ad on social media for Honey Bucket. It just continues, my oh my.
Before all that, he once told LL writer Isabelle Minasian how to make the perfect breakfast sandwich, a topic that brought great passion out of the usual very rote and plain-spoken Cal Raleigh.
Anyways, the folks on the Meet at the Mitt podcast spoke after the derby about how Cal’s season is continuing to defy belief. Things are going so well in a way that Mariners fans are generally not accustomed to, so it really just bears repeating over and over just how incredible and singular this 2025 season has been so far for Cal. Feels like the sky is the limit for the second half of the 2025 season.
Let’s look back on some pre-All-Star Break polls to see how many folks guessed correctly.
Cal hit 17, 19, and 18 home runs in each round so folks who chose 16-20 were right on the money!
Yeah, he was a bit tired maybe from hitting 54 home runs the day before!
The fun answer always wins, it seems.
Moving along to this week’s polls, the Mariners take on the hated Houston Astros this weekend. According to Zach Mason on the pod, the Mariners have played Houston 3 out of the last 4 seasons for the first post-All-Star break series. Have an original thought for once in your life, MLB schedulers!
Let’s prognosticate this series:
That’s all, folks! Hats off to Cal for an incredible week and go Mariners!