In 2022, when Cal Raleigh drilled a walk-off homer near the right-field foul pole to send the Mariners to their first postseason since 2001, bullpen coach Tony Arnerich told him, “The Big Dumper just became famous in Seattle.” When Raleigh this season became the first catcher to win a Home Run Derby, Arnerich told Raleigh his oft-used nickname was now “kinda famous everywhere.”
This October, there’s no “kinda” to it: Raleigh is a bona fide star. He is coming off a 60-homer regular season in which he surpassed Ken Griffey Jr. for the Mariners record, smashed Mickey Mantle’s mark (54) for switch-hitters, and set a new bar for home runs from a catcher, passing Salvador Perez, who hit 48 in 2021. And he’s now the most notable player on a talented Mariners team that will need to overcome Cy Young favorite Tarik Skubal and the Detroit Tigers in a win-or-go-home Game 5 of the AL Divisional Series in Seattle on Friday.
In the first four games of the series, Raleigh is 7-for-16 (.438) —the highest average among playoff catchers— with a homer, two runs scored and an OPS of 1.188. But for all of his on-field exploits this season, Raleigh has been equally impressive in how he’s handled the moments away from the spotlight.
There’s the ball that snuck under his mask and hit him in the throat the night he passed Griffey. The elbow that bothered him for days after being hit by a foul tip earlier this season. The swollen finger from catching a sinker wrong. The endless balls to the ankles, the legs, the face. His daily pre- and postgame routine involves the training room because it has to. Following Game 3’s homer in Detroit, Raleigh’s right forearm was wrapped. Every night Raleigh absorbs another hit somewhere. He loathes being asked if he’s OK.
“He’ll say, ‘Don’t ask me that,’” Arnerich said. “He hates when the trainers come out, too. He’s really tough, it’s not an act.”
Last year, Raleigh played with a broken tooth during an April game against the Texas Rangers. When he hit the walk off in 2022, Raleigh was playing with a broken left thumb and torn ligament. Last year, there was more finger pain, depending on which way Raleigh caught a pitch. Still, he won a Platinum Glove, the sport’s highest defensive honor.
This is how you create a winning culture, when your best player is also the poster boy for hard work. For a typical night game at the start of a series, Raleigh is at the park more than six hours early. There’s a team staff meeting at 1 and a catchers’ meeting at 1:30 where the group goes over the previous series and dives into the next opponent, going in depth on every hitter on the roster (for the Tigers series, the catchers were able to hold that meeting on the Friday off day). That meeting is at least a half-hour and then Raleigh is off to the cold tub, hot tub, training work and weight room.
Pregame, it’s a lot of preventative stuff. Then Raleigh switches into hitter mode, where he will go down to the cages and take swings. Being a switch hitter means double the work. Occasionally he’ll take batting practice on the field, but often he’ll go back into the cage while the team does. After batting practice, Raleigh will meet with the starting pitcher, pitching coach Pete Woodworth and an analyst to go through that night’s opposing batting order and a plan of attack.
Then he’s back to offensive mode in the daily hitters’ meeting analyzing the opposing starter and any potential relievers. After that, he returns to the weight room for movement prep and the cage for challenging drills off a machine, where –again– Raleigh goes from the left and right side of the plate.
Raleigh’s routine ends in the bullpen with pregame prep drills with Arnerich, who is also the team’s catching instructor, where he practices receiving and blocking balls and his footwork. The pair will play catch and then warm up the starting pitcher. On the road, Raleigh preps the starter and then goes back to the dugout, where he’ll get an at-bat in the top of the first as the Mariners’ No. 2 hitter.
This is all before Raleigh crouches behind the plate for roughly three hours, calling 150 pitches a night and manning a 13-person pitching staff’s stuff, repertoire, and personality. He is part NFL coordinator, part quarterback. He has two jobs: hitting and catching, though as a switch-hitter it’s really three. He’s also the guy in charge of knowing each pitcher’s personalities and mound visit preference – who to push and who to encourage — and how to interact with the umpire to get borderline calls.
“It’s probably four jobs,” Arnerich says, with a laugh of disbelief, calling the last one part-therapist. “I don’t think people realize how hard it is, what he’s doing.”
It is, in the words of one executive, a massive investment of time and emotional energy. Something we may never see again.
Raleigh finished the regular season ranked first in the majors in home runs, leading the AL in RBIs and posting a fWAR over 9, a total greater than the rest of the division’s backstops combined. He played in 159 games in the regular season, with 121 behind the plate, and that’s before his four games in the AL Division Series against Detroit, which the Mariners hope is just the first stop on the way to the first pennant (and World Series title) in franchise history.
Raleigh will be behind the plate again Friday night, in a game where the Mariners’ season hangs in the balance. He will arrive before everyone else and begin to prepare the same way he has for the last six months. He is the most important player on the field for the home team, the guy most responsible for bringing Seattle fans out of baseball anguish. He will squat behind the plate with more than a hundred decisions to make, along with countless bruises and injuries that we may never know about.
Don’t ask him if he’s OK. Raleigh won’t answer that question until the Mariners are the last team standing.