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Mariners are 'counting' on a bounce back season from Cal Raleigh
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- Mariners are 'counting' on a bounce back season from Cal Raleigh
Mariners are 'counting' on a bounce back season from Cal Raleigh originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
Cal Raleigh had an otherworldly 2025 season for the Seattle Mariners .
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The catcher's 2026 season can be summed up in one word.
Disappointing.
After stunning the baseball world by hitting 60 home runs and finishing second in the AL MVP voting, Raleigh took a gigantic step backwards this year.
His OPS+ dropped from 168 to 91, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Raleigh's offensive numbers were down across the board.
"The numbers looked even worse for Raleigh before he slugged nine home runs in August, but he still saw his production absolutely fall off a cliff relative to his 60-homer, 7.2-WAR season in 2025.
"With four years left on his six-year, $105 million extension, the M's will be counting on him returning to star-level production next season," Bleacher Report's Joel Reuter wrote.
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Was last season an outlier for Raleigh, or can the Mariners expect him to return to that level? Even something that resembles it would tremendously help Seattle's postseason odds.
A 23-homer season is a solid campaign for a player with above-average power, but not for Raleigh. That's before mentioning his putrid .182 batting average and 30.9% strikeout rate.
The point is, the Mariners probably won't make another deep postseason run unless Raleigh can snap out of the funk that limited him to 1.0 bWAR.
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