In any context, and in any era of baseball, Cal Raleigh’s achievements this summer are historic.
For Raleigh, though, his record-breaking 48th and 49th home runs Sunday matter most in one context.
“The hardest part is just trying to stay focused on the main goal, and that’s winning baseball games and helping this team get to where we need to get to,” Raleigh said. “And obviously, doing this stuff has been awesome and amazing, but at the same time it’s more focusing on the other guys in that room, focusing on the pitchers, focusing on the team goals, rather than myself.
“And usually when I’m focused on that, good things happen.”
A lot of good things happened for the Mariners in their 11-4 romp over the Athletics at T-Mobile Park on Sunday afternoon.
Desperate for an offensive spark, the Mariners (70-61) got one with Raleigh’s first swing of the game when he launched his 48th homer 448 feet off A’s left-hander Jacob Lopez into the second deck in left field to tie Kansas City’s Salvador Perez (2021) for the record for homers by a catcher in a season.
It was the longest home run of Raleigh’s career hitting right-handed.
Raleigh provided another lift with his second swing of the game in the second inning, sending a first-pitch changeup from Lopez off the out-of-town scoreboard and into the visitors’ bullpen.
That gave him 49 homers on the season and the MLB record by a catcher.
The T-Mobile Park crowd of 37,550 greeted the homer with a boisterous “MVP!” chant as Raleigh rounded the bases. After raising the celebratory trident, he received a curtain call in the dugout, tipping his helmet to the crowd.
“My only regret is he didn’t stay out in front of the dugout a little bit longer and enjoy it,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “I mean, what an incredible feat. I don’t know how you can even fathom how big that is when you look at some of the people he’s passed and just what the magnitude of that record is. Just a huge congratulations to Cal.”
The Mariners had lost eight of 10 coming into Sunday, and their offensive outburst Sunday secured their first series victory in two weeks, since completing a sweep of Tampa Bay on Aug. 10.
More notably, it pulled them to two games behind the Houston Astros in the AL West, with 31 games remaining in the regular season.
The Mariners are home against the San Diego Padres (74-57) for a three-game series starting Monday.
“It’s all right in front of us,” said Mariners starter Logan Gilbert, who struck out a career-high 13 batters over six dazzling innings. “I think if we play like we can, like you saw today, we’ve got a really good shot, especially at home. I feel like it’s tough for teams to come in here and beat us, and we’ve got a big series coming up with the Padres after this.
“This is when it’s really fun baseball.”
The M’s improved to 30-10 when Raleigh homers, and 7-2 when he homers twice.
Raleigh’s nine multi-homer games passed Ken Griffey Jr. (1997) for the most multi-homer games in a season in franchise history and moved him ahead of Mickey Mantle (1961) for the most multi-homer games by a switch-hitter.
Raleigh also is closing in on Griffey’s franchise record of 56 home runs, set twice (in 1997 and ’98).
“He’s starting to set a bar that’s equal to nobody else that’s done this,” Wilson said. “… It’s getting to a point where you can’t compare him to anybody.”
Gilbert, coming off one of the worst starts of his career last week in Philadelphia, bounced back with one of his best games of the season, allowing just one run on a Jacob Wilson solo homer in the second inning. Gilbert allowed just three hits with one walk.
He had 13 strikeouts and 25 swings-and-misses, both career highs.
The Mariners pulled away with six runs in the third inning. Victor Robles, in his second game back from a four-month injury absence, had a two-run single, and Julio Rodríguez and Josh Naylor each drove in two runs in the inning.
Raleigh caught all 28 innings in the series against the Athletics, and his 98 appearances at catcher are more than anyone in the American League this season.
Naturally, Wilson was just as excited to highlight his catcher’s defense as his record-breaking homer Sunday.
“I think I want to talk about his blocking today more,” Wilson, the team’s Hall of Fame catcher, said with a smile. “What a great job he did and when you think about Logan and setting a career high in strikeouts, the confidence he had in the split (his split-fingered fastball) and Cal being able to stop it was — it all goes hand in hand.”
Adam Jude: ajude@seattletimes.com. Adam Jude is a Seattle Mariners beat writer at The Seattle Times. He previously covered UW Huskies football and the Seattle Seahawks for The Seattle Times.