Cal Raleigh's Struggles Continue After MVP Runner-Up Season
Cal Raleigh, ex-MVP runner-up, has hit an extended slump with a .157 average and 54 strikeouts in 39 games this season, raising concerns about his form.
Video Transcript
And I wanna start with the viral struggle of Cal Raleigh, who if I'm not mistaken, is 0 for his last 36, Cal Raleigh is.
He was sporting an 0 for 34.
I believe he got to 0 for 36 on Monday night.
But Cal Raleigh off of an MVP caliber season where he finished as the runner-up to Aaron Judge, won a Silver Slugger, 60 homers, 125 driven in, and was a seven-and-a-half win catcher through the eyes of VORP, through 39 ballgames is hitting 157 with a 560 OPS.
Still hitting the ball out of the ballpark to a certain extent, seven homers in 39 games, but he's punched out 54 times and he's not getting on base.
It's a 238 OBP, and through the eyes of war, he has been a negative player.
I never saw a world, honestly, that this would happen to Cal Raleigh.
His average exit velocity is down four miles per hour.
And what's scary too is, like, this goes back to the WBC when he wasn't playing there and getting blown up there.
so now you're just like, "What, what is, what is happening?"
I It was a year where I think Cal wins the MVP a lot of other seasons.
Have we ever seen an MVP caliber player struggle this much through It's one thing for, like, the first month, but now that we're getting to a month and a half, a little bit more than that, a- and how bad the struggles have been, I can't remember something this outrageous and this kind of jarring.
And it's big reason why the Mariners aren't quite reaching their potential.
You have the best start to the season in Julio Rodriguez's career, and a notoriously slow starter is swinging it well.
Could you imagine if they had this Cal to pair?
157, 558 OPS.
You mentioned the seven homers at least, but just seeing the average exit velocity crater by four miles per hour is really interesting to me.
The average air exit velocity is down three miles per hour, and the hard hit rate's 28%.
I, I almost wonder if something's Like, y- I would imagine if he was hurt he wouldn't be playing.
But when you look at that you say, like, "Is he right physically?"
Because it do- it doesn't seem like there's anything mechanically that you can point to that would imply something that dramatic of a drop-off.
Can I tell you that's the scariest part of some of this, when the swing is so simple and you can't point to anything.
Like, I saw Harold Reynolds had, had a thought that it could be timing and everything just seems a beat late for him.
But, like, I think back to a couple of years ago where Spencer Torkelson on the heels of a 31 homer season was optioned to Triple-A Toledo and could not hit anything in the big leagues.
And we were sitting here trying to talk about, like, what's going wrong with Tork, and you were like, "Dude, there are very few things to mess up because of how simple the swing is."
A- and I guess that is, like, when I get the heebie-jeebies on a guy, because if you point to a mechanical thing, okay, at least you have closure.
It just seems like there's no closure right now with why this is happening to Cal Raleigh.
Well, and he made a mechanical adjustment that allowed him to be the MVP runner-up last year.
And when you look at the mechanics, they look pretty darn similar.
And like you mentioned, there's not a, not a ton of moving parts.
There was a similar conversation with Gunner, and that's where, like- Yeah we were gonna talk about it a couple shows ago, and I, like, I struck it from the, itinerary there because I'm like, "I need more time."
This is such a simple swing to try to figure out what's wrong.
It, it is 100% more stressful when you have a simple swing and the guy's not figuring it out.
the other thing is if you do- to the timing point, I don't think the air pull would The air pull would take a pretty significant hit, and the launch angle would take a pretty significant hit.
And Cal is still air pulling at a 43% clip, which is ridiculously strong.
and he is still, has an average launch angle of 23 degrees.
Last year's air pull was 50%, and the average launch angle was 25 degrees.
So, I mean, some of it is, I'm sure, just being pitched to a little bit differently, but he was being pitched to differently, by this time last year, you know, with the way he was swinging it, and especially through the playoffs where he continued to perform.
The fact that he's getting blown up by four seamers is the weird part when you're still seeing the air pull being there.
So that's why the timing is, like, a good early hypothesis, but at the same time, it doesn't totally check out.
And the biggest thing is, like, the, the, the dip in quality of contact that is particularly jarring.
But swinging under four seems a lot, it could be just the fact that he is tardy on those, and then he's out and around, you know, softer stuff.
But zone contact down, you know, 14% on four seamers is pretty wild, and maybe that's the biggest thing that's affecting him right now is just that he is under, you know, the stuff that he normally catches up to, and then it's speeding him up for stuff that's slower.
And Peyton just dropped in the private chat that it could be an oblique issue that Raleigh is dealing with, which, you know, would be fascinating to know how that is affecting the swing and what goes on with Cal Raleigh.
