SI:AM | Do You Realize How Bad Cal Raleigh Has Been?

The Mariners catcher hit a clutch grand slam on Monday, but he’s still having an alarmingly terrible season.

Cal Raleigh has been alarmingly terrible at the plate this season. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. If you’re experiencing soccer withdrawal, read all the way to the end for some great drama on the pitch. 

In today’s SI:AM: 
🏆 14 teams with Super Bowl hopes
🏈 SEC falling behind?
⚾ Verducci’s View

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Big Dumper’s big issues

Late last night, a post on Bluesky from the baseball writer Sam Miller caught my eye. 

“Whatever day this year that you remember thinking “man, what happened to Cal Raleigh, he’s been terrible”—since that day, he’s been worse,” Miller wrote. 

Indeed, it had been a while since I’d paid any attention to Raleigh. I wrote in the May 12 edition of this newsletter about how Raleigh was hitless in his last 36 at-bats, with a .157 batting average and 54 strikeouts in his first 39 games of the season. Hours after that newsletter hit your inbox, Raleigh snapped the streak with a 2-for-4 night. The following night, he exited the game early and was placed on the injured list with an oblique strain. When he returned to the lineup on June 16, the World Cup was in full swing, the NBA draft was on the horizon and other players were playing good baseball. I had more important things to pay attention to than the Mariners’ slumping catcher. 

But Miller is right: Raleigh has been horrendous no matter how you slice his season. He’s been so bad, in fact, that the Reds chose to intentionally walk the hitter in front of him to load the bases in the seventh inning of last night’s game in Seattle. Raleigh made them pay with a grand slam, capping a six-run inning as the Mariners went on to win, 8–0. 

“I know what Raleigh’s hitting, and he still worries me,” Cincinnati manager Terry Francona said after the game. “But I thought it was our best chance to have them not score. We could play the infield at double-play depth. And the worst possible outcome happened.”

It was the worst possible outcome for the Reds, and, statistically speaking, a highly unlikely one. Raleigh began the night with just five extra-base hits in his previous 38 games. That’s two homers and three doubles since April 28. Even after last night’s grand slam, he now has just 17 extra-base hits (10 homers and seven doubles) in 69 games this season after hitting 26 homers in the same number of games to start last season. 

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Raleigh went from having one of the best offensive seasons in the history of the sport last season to being one of the worst hitters in the league this year. 

Raleigh hit 60 home runs last year, just the 10th time in MLB history that a player has reached that benchmark. He’s only the fourth player to hit 60 bombs who hasn’t been widely linked to performance-enhancing drug use. The only other switch hitter to hit at least 50 homers in a season is Mickey Mantle. 

But he’s on the complete opposite side of the spectrum this year. His slash line is a brutal .163/.266/.307. That’s a .573 OPS. The only other player in the majors this season with at least as much playing time as Raleigh and an OPS under .580 is Rockies shortstop Ezequiel Tovar (.566). Raleigh’s never been much of an on-base threat, but he obviously has a reputation as a slugger. Even still, only three players in the big leagues have had as many plate appearances as Raleigh and a lower slugging percentage (Jakob Marsee, Steven Kwan and Nasim Nuñez). 

The startling thing about Raleigh’s performance this season is that he’s suddenly stopped making quality contact. He’s always been prone to whiffs and strikeouts, but historically he’s made the most of the contact he does make. Last season, nearly half (49.6%) of his batted balls were classified as hard-hit by Statcast. That ranked in the top 15% of the league. This season, his hard-hit rate is just 32.1%—in the bottom 15% of the league. 

If there’s a silver lining for Raleigh and the Mariners, it’s that they’ve been able to keep their heads above water even with this gaping hole in the heart of the lineup. Seattle is 51–50 after last night’s win, a half-game ahead of the Rangers for first place in the AL West. If Raleigh could even become a simply mediocre player in the second half of the season, it’d go a long way toward helping the Mariners build a bigger cushion in the division. 

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Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated (Allen); Lon Horwedel/Imagn Images (Goff); Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated (Prescott)

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The top five…

… things I saw last night (and tonight in Australia):
5. Red Sox shortstop Tsung-Che Cheng’s catch for the final out of Boston’s 14th straight win. 
4. A great diving catch in center by Pete Crow-Armstrong. 
3. Jo Adell’s reaction to winning the game for the Angels by getting drilled with a fastball. 
2. Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s go-ahead home run for the Yankees in the third inning that proved to be the game-winner. Chisholm also had a three-run homer in the first after hitting a go-ahead homer in the bottom of the eighth the night before. 
1. Daniel Lazarevski’s header late in stoppage time as semi-pro club Preston Lions beat Aussie powerhouse Newcastle Jets in the Australia Cup. Newcastle is the defending Cup winner and won Australia’s domestic league last season.