Cal Raleigh’s very, very, very bad year
Looking over the ledge of greatness. Plus: The Fourth Out.
Last night’s familiar Mariners loss, their fifth in a row, ended with Cal Raleigh swinging and missing at a high fastball. Afterward, he apparently asked to speak to the assembled media ahead of manager Dan Wilson. The catcher, who last season walloped 60 homers and carried the Mariners to the brink of their first World Series, wanted to publicly state the obvious.
“We’re not playing well, that starts with me — I’m awful,” he told reporters. Through an injury-interrupted 86 games, he is batting .159/.264/.299 with 12 homers. The batting average is the worst among any MLB hitter who has been allowed 300+ plate appearances. His 32.2% strikeout rate is ninth-worst.
Stating the obvious, in this way, is also known as taking accountability. It’s the debt coming due on the credit Raleigh earned with his historic 2025 performance and the run of optimism he has inspired in Seattle.
Viewed as top-tier contenders in the American League in the spring, the Mariners aren’t even keeping up with the league’s mediocre pack. They now sit four games back of the third wild card and four-and-a-half back of the division-leading Astros. Six teams stand between them and a postseason spot, three of which decidedly sold at the trade deadline.
“We're just playing very, very, very bad baseball in every facet of the game,” Raleigh continued.
This sort of public acknowledgment is a weird thing that has long been either demanded or supplied, to the point where it doesn’t really matter which one is which. We expect the face of the franchise, the face of the Very Bad Season, to look at the ugly reality and describe it for the record.
There’s not much else to do.
To spare Raleigh further self-flagellation, I wanted to answer the unfortunate but pressing question of just how weird, bad and historic his deflating follow-up act has been.
So, how far has Raleigh fallen off after …
