It's no surprise, as Cal Raleigh heats up so are the Seattle Mariners
It was never gonna be 60 again. It was probably never gonna be 50, to be honest. Cal Raleigh's historic home-run count in 2025 was sublime but not sustainable.
Still ... his bat is the most significant piece of lumber in the Mariners' lineup. And the fact that he has seemingly rediscovered his swing is the biggest takeaway from this last road trip.
Sunday, the M's provided another come-from-behind victory via their 3-2 win over the Cardinals. Their one-run triumph completed a series sweep in St. Louis and improved their record to 14-15.
No, this is not the start this ostensible World Series contender wanted when the season began. Sitting just below .500 29 games into the season isn't a disaster, but it is a disappointment.
But most of those early losses came as Cal was about as productive as a replacement-level player. Now he's clawing back toward the type of hitter that can't be replaced.
Before April 20, Raleigh was hitting .161, slugging .290 and had notched just two homers through 23 games. It was the kind of stat line that might have gotten a player benched if he didn't have a track record that, in many pundits' minds, made him one of the top 10 players in MLB.
Since April 20, though, he has homered four more times - including a solo shot in the fourth inning Sunday - and watched his slugging average climb to .398.
Is he anywhere close to where he was last year? No, his 6 dingers have him on pace for 33 home runs. But given Raleigh's history, this fusillade of long balls over the past seven days suggests something close to the old Cal is returning.
True, Rob Refsnyder's solo, pinch-hit homer in the top of the ninth to put the Mariners up 3-2 was the most dramatic swing of the day. It put the Mariners in position to win two innings after they tied the game after Connor Joe - who doubled - scored on a Cole Young single.
But the Mariners might not have won Sunday without Raleigh. Just like they might not have had he not gone yard in Seattle's 5-4 win over the A's Thursday - which sparked the team's current four-game winning streak.
No one person in baseball can carry a team. The fact that a prime Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout never made the postseason together in Anaheim proves as much. But one person can be the difference in a handful of wins that turn an above-average club into a division winner. The Mariners, I imagine, are counting on Cal to be that guy.
Whether Raleigh was going to resemble the MVP runner-up of last year felt like one of the bigger offseason storylines. He is not Ohtani or Aaron Judge or even Julio Rodriguez in the sense that he has put together a string of A-list level seasons. He has a lot of solid years (27 home runs, 30, 34) - and one spectacular one in which he hit 60.
Conventional wisdom suggested he'd regress to somewhere between his superstar season and his second-best one. That narrative is still playing out.
What should be encouraging for Mariners fans is that the offense as a whole seems to be resuscitating. They're up to 17th in MLB in OPS while playing in the most pitcher-friendly park in baseball (particularly in the colder months of the year).
In short: They're fine. They might not be dominating the way fans hoped they would after falling one win shy of their first pennant last season, but a sluggish team has transformed into a slugging team over the past week - and the man behind the plate is leading the charge.
I understand the ebbs and flows of baseball. Momentum is a fleeting thing. Right after I wrote a column lauding the M's for their four-game sweep of the Astros earlier in the month, they went ahead and lost four in a row. These things happen. This is hardly a 100-win team in the making.
What the Mariners are are a squad with one of the deepest rotations in baseball bolstered by an offense that, if great will blow opponents away, if poor will lose close games, if decent will edge out wins. That offense is trending up. The team's best hitter is, too.
It's a long season. What that sentence lacks in originality, it makes up for in truth. But Cal creeping back toward his old ways seemed inevitable. The Mariners winning again did, too.
Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.
This story was originally published April 27, 2026 at 6:42 AM.