Cal Raleigh: Halfway There?
Cal Raleigh, Aaron Judge, and this year's home run chase.
Cal Raleigh has appeared in all but one Mariners game this season. On June 8th, against the Angels, Dan Wilson had him sit, and the gamble—and it was a gamble indeed—paid off. The Mariners won 3-2 (although in a weird final box, the Mariners hammered 11 hits to 2 from the Angels, and only won by a run). Other than that, he has at least batted in every game of the 2025 season, putting up a 197 OPS+. If you take WAR literally, Cal Raleigh has been the difference between the Mariners and a .500 team (4.6 WAR, and the Mariners are 4 over).
This shouldn’t be that surprising: a power-hitting catcher with Platinum Glove defense, who walks? That’s a potent WAR recipe.
But it actually undersells the fact, since Cal is undoubtedly more essential to the Mariners than 4-5 wins. He is the cornerstone of their lineup—just for one example, does anyone seriously believe J.P. Crawford (125 OPS+) is having his season without the threat of Raleigh behind him? The Seamen are nowhere near contention with an average catcher in his place (the average catcher, by the way, is below replacement level at any other position). There is no catcher in the AL even close to his output, and in the NL, there is only Will Smith, whose numbers are juiced batting in the Dodgers’ lineup. Dumper still leads Smith by almost 100 points of OPS.
So, the question of whether Cal Raleigh is having the best catcher season currently is beyond debate. He is already at the threshold of historical comparisons.
Catcher King
We have entered the territory of tracking him with an eye on history.
Entering July 1st, Cal Raleigh has played 83 games and leads baseball with 33 home runs, 71 RBI. He leads even Aaron Judge in RBI, despite the Mariners fielding a team with the approximate non-Cal offensive output of the Yankees’ bat boys. He is on pace for 399 total bases, which would top both Aaron Judge MVP seasons (Judge is on pace for more than 400, but he has been at the half every season for years. He tends to fade from immortal to merely great in the second half). I bring this up because, if the season ended today, I am certain Judge would win the MVP with a large majority of the vote (although he’s batting .217 in the last 14 games). But Judge is an average to slightly-below-average right fielder (and a terrible center fielder) with MVP offense. Cal is, according to major awards, the best defender in the entire sport at the premium position of all premium positions also with MVP offense.
But let’s leave awards for later. How does Cal compare to catchers?
Well, let’s start with the homers. Raleigh is at 33 home runs. The catcher record—set in 2021—is 48 by Salvador Perez. This broke a record which had stood for 51 years.
Sidebar: In 2021, Salvy Perez had one of the oddest seasons ever. He batted .273, hit 48 homers, and drove in 121, the last two leading the league. But he walked only 28 times and struck out 170 times, for an on-base percentage of .316, which tied for 105th in baseball.
A catcher hitting 40 home runs has happened a total of eight times since Integration, accomplished by six players. That Cal will join this club is a foregone conclusion—he could go ice-cold in the second half, halve his home run rate…and still easily clear 40. The question is, can he hit 16 home runs in his final 78 games and break the record?
Let’s look at his pace versus Perez in ‘21.
Perez turned it on late, hitting 22 home runs between August 1 and the end of the season. His pace through July 1st was 16.5 AB/HR, but 10.7 from then to the end of the season. Overall, he averaged 12.9 AB/HR. To date, Big Dumper is averaging 9.3 AB/HR, which would be a 64 HR pace over 600 ABs. Let’s just hypothesize Cal gets 300 more ABs (he’s currently at 308).
Cal Raleigh HR pace
Over 300 more ABs this season:
18.7 AB/HR → 49 home runs, catcher record
17.5 AB/HR → first 50 home run season by a catcher
11.1 AB/HR → third 60 home run season outside steroid era
10.34 AB/HR → tie Aaron Judge’s AL record of 62
10 AB/HR → break the AL record with 63
I’m not saying, but I am saying: to hit 63 and become immortal, Cal only needs to maintain his pace.
Using the Play Index, which is a monthly expense I pay for on the basis that A) I use it at least once a month, and B) it’s wicked cool, I looked up all spans of the first 81 games of the season by someone playing catcher or DH (there was no option in the Span Finder to say “a primary catcher with some games at DH). Here is the list, with primary DHs edited out:
Highest OPS through 81 games for a primary catcher since 2000
And let’s acknowledge the steroid era’s effect on this list. The average runs per game in 2000 was 5.14. That’s to say that in 2000, the fifteenth-ranked team in the league hit like the 2025 Arizona Diamondbacks (the second- or third- best offense in baseball this year). Another way to contextualize 2000 stats: this year, there are three players in baseball with an OPS over 1.000 through 81 games. In 2000, I shit you not, there were twenty-eight at the same point!
We forget: 2000 baseball stats literally hit different.
And let’s also asterisk the 2019 Mitch Garver extravaganza, because the entire league was playing with a juiced ball. Even as a Twins fan, I cannot but consume the salt grain.
That leaves Mauer ‘09—which I have argued in another post is maybe the greatest catcher season in history—as the only catcher first half with comparably stupefying numbers.
One final number with respect to catchers: as mentioned, Cal currently has a 197 OPS+, meaning his OPS is 97% higher than league average of all players this year (this is also adjusted slightly for ballpark factors). Here is a complete, unabbreviated list of every catcher to have even a 170 OPS or better, playing enough to Qualify:
Catcher seasons with OPS+ above 170 since Integration
Cal Raleigh, 2025 (active) | 197
Mike Piazza, 1997 | 185
Mike Piazza, 1995 | 172
Joe Mauer, 2009 | 171
Buster Posey, 2012 | 171
That is it. Johnny Bench’s 1970 campaign doesn’t make the list, nor, for reasons explained above, Mike Piazza’s later campaigns. Thurman Munson, Carlton Fisk, and Roy Campanella never managed it.
In Broader Context
So, Cal Raleigh is putting together, at minimum, one of the greatest catcher seasons in recent history, and one of the three best offensive seasons of 2025, alongside two of the greatest players of this age. So how does his first half stack up to all of baseball? Let’s say he doesn’t catch: is this still a historic season?
I used the Span Finder again.
Since 2015, nobody, at any position, has hit more than 33 home runs in their first 83 games. Ohtani equaled this in 2021, but Judge has never hit more than 31 by Game 83. Outside Judge and Ohtani seasons, only four other players have managed 30 in such a span: Fernando Tatis, Jr. in 2021, and three 2019 first-halves (Christian Yelich, Nelson Cruz, and Garver). So his pace, at least for the start of a season, is basically unheard-of.
Expanding our scope to look at first-halves—keeping in mind that Raleigh’s is not yet complete—we see that in the last twenty years, Raleigh is already in the top-five of homers hit before the All-Star Break. Above him are 2013 Chris Davis, 2024 Aaron Judge, and 2021 Ohtani again, with Ohtani ‘23 following him at fifth. By the way, since 2005, the most pre-Break homers would be Davis’ 37. It’s hard to imagine, with something like 12 games left, Cal won’t get there.
His pace in other statistics might also make history. As mentioned, Cal is on pace for just about 400 total bases. This feat has been done a total of 11 times since Integration.
Sidebar: Musial holds the record of 429 total bases, set in 1948—probably unbreakable because it requires a degree of all-around excellence which just does not exist in modern baseball. To set this record, Musial pounded out 230 hits, including 46 doubles, 18 triples, and 39 home runs, while walking about twice as often as he struck out. He won the Sabermetric Quadruple Crown with .376/.450/.702/1.152, which was incredibly the second time he did this. The only players to do this more than twice are Ted Williams and Rogers Hornsby. I expect to write a post sometime about this incredibly difficult accomplishment.
Here are the players to manage 400 total bases in a season, since Integration, and how many times they did it:
Sammy Sosa (twice) - but steroids
Todd Helton (twice) - but Coors Field
Stan Musial (once) - Major League Record, 429 (1948)
Luis Gonzalez (once)
Barry Bonds (once)
Shohei Ohtani (once)
Jim Rice (once) - Wait, what?
Larry Walker (once) - but Coors Field: The Early Years
Hank Aaron (once)
Once again: Cal Raleigh only needs to maintain this pace to enter this ultra-exclusive club.
WAR
Cal Raleigh has a real shot at something almost as historic in the sabermetric realm, as well. As I believe I may have mentioned, he’s is a catcher—and a great catcher—which enhanced his standing in the WAR formula. Like young Mike Trout, Cal Raleigh seems built to exploit the Runs Created formula: he plays a premium position extremely well, gets on base a lot, and hits for a ton of power while playing in a pitcher-friendly park. He’s constantly on the field, and as of today, he has put up 4.6 Wins Above Replacement, placing him on pace for 9.2 WAR.
How rare is 9.0 WAR?
Well, since 2005 (which is both a clean 20 years ago and a convenient cutoff for the steroid era), there haven’t been many players to accomplish this. Mike Trout, of course, has done it four times. Judge, Mookie Betts, Albert Pujols, and Alex Rodriguez each did it twice. Last year, three players did it: Gunnar Henderson (currently having a far less spectacular season); Bobby Witt Jr. (the new generation’s Mike Trout, brilliant at literally everything); and of course, Ohtani. In 2015, Bryce Harper did it; and in the weirdest entry on this list, in 2008 Chase Utley did it?! While leading the league in….nothing?!
Since Integration, 43 different players have put up 9 WAR, 16 doing it twice or more (Willie Mays leads after Integration with 9, but Ruth had 10 before). It’s really hard to do, in other words.
But 10 WAR is truly legendary. Now, disclaimer, Cal is not on pace to reach 10 WAR, and I do not see him reaching 10 WAR for reasons I will get into below, but he’s close enough to the pace for me to at least bring it up. This barrier has only been crossed by 17 hitters since Integration. Aaron Judge has done it twice, then there are ‘18 Betts and Trout in ‘16 and ‘12. Cal Raleigh would have to up his production starting immediately to have a shot at 10.
Finish Lines
It’s hard for me to imagine Cal Raleigh reaching 10 WAR, and I think it somewhat unlikely he will even hit 9.0. We of course must acknowledge the primary reason to ignore on-pace-for clickbait like this post: injury. Cal has only missed one game so far, and the Mariners, who rank 11th in R/G and 13th in Run Differential, cannot survive without him. He is under enormous pressure to play the most physically demanding position pretty much every day. The drop-off from him to Mitch Garver catching is like the drop-off between a 500-foot Bezosian megayacht and the raingutter regata.
Even assuming health, there are reasons to think Cal will slow down a bit: for one thing, the rest of the Mariners’ lineup need to play rather better if Cal is going to see pitches to hit. This has been true all season, but one does wonder if the league will eventually just back off. James Wood in the other league is already being walked because the Other Nats just cannot induce any fear in opposing pitchers. They’d rather brave CJ Abrams and vacate Wood to first, because after them, it’s the whiff twins, Nathaniel Lowe and Josh Bell [symbolic foghorn]. Cal is bound to get some of this treatment. He has already walked 53 times, but I’d say that will rise while the homer rate drops. Nonetheless, however, he’s on such a trajectory that barring major missed time, he’s almost certain to eclipse 50 home runs. It would be tragic if he didn’t. But beyond that, I’m not sure.
What will be most interesting is what happens with award voting: if Judge stumbles in the second half, as he has before, and Cal hits 50+ dingers while Gold Gloving it back there, he will almost certainly pass Judge in the WAR calculation. Would that be enough for him to wrestle back the MVP award the major media have already handed Judge in their minds? Hmm. On one hand, nothing—I mean literally nothing—could wrest the NL MVP away from Ohtani this year. Even if he breaks his neck tonight, they are giving him that award. The cultural momentum is unstoppable, and Judge and Ohtani have been treated as a tandem atop the awards ballot all year. But what if Cal, like Judge a few years ago, does something no one’s ever done? Like hitting 55 home runs as a catcher. What if he puts up 9.0 WAR, leading Judge? Might that be enough?
It’s going to be hella compelling in the second half. I’m glued to the team from Seattle until further notice.