Cal Raleigh is aware of how he let Mariners down in historic 2025 season

Cal Raleigh hit 60 home runs last year. It was kind of a big deal, and he arguably should have won the American League MVP for it. In fact, even he's ready to admit it was kind of a bummer that he didn't.

Still, even a season like that isn't above criticism. And even as Raleigh was chasing records and leading the Seattle Mariners to an AL West title in 2025, it was an open secret that he wasn't as brilliant defensively as he had been the year before.

When Raleigh won the AL Platinum Glove Award for the 2024 season, he was sitting on a sky-high pile of impressive metrics. Notably, he led all AL players in overall defensive value and he was third in Catching Runs at plus-15.

Raleigh was still good on defense last year. Just not as good, as best seen in how he went down to plus-seven in Catching Runs. His goose egg in the passed balls column obscured a broader struggle with blocking pitches, and his Framing Runs dropped from plus-13 to plus-seven.

Cal Raleigh knows he has work to do on defense in 2026

None of this is damning enough to deny Raleigh his rightful place as the best catcher in baseball. That's the universal consensus heading into 2026, including for ESPN's Buster Olney.

Somewhat buried within Olney's writeup on Raleigh, though, is this little gem on his defensive regression: "When Raleigh was asked about this, he said he would take a look at the numbers and figure out why the analytics indicated his defense regressed in '25."

Now, it could be that there's nothing to his framing regression from 2024 to 2025. We tend to think of defense as more of a set-it-and-forget-it skill than hitting, but it's not. Players have a baseline on defense, but they deviate from it from year to year.

Yet as Olney notes by citing a rival evaluator, Raleigh's setup behind the plate is such that he's better at framing high strikes than low strikes. The data bears that out, as he's had only one season out of five in which his framing on low strikes has been a net positive for his pitchers.

One is skeptical as to whether Raleigh can simply study and work his way into more strikes at the bottom of the zone. At 6-foot-2, 235 pounds, he's a big guy for umpires to see over. And as such, his receiving form might not be the only reason he's not getting the low strike.

What can help Raleigh this year, though, is the ABS.

The Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System is finally coming to MLB, and Raleigh stands to perhaps be the master of it. Catchers have a natural advantage when it comes to challenging ball-strike calls, and Raleigh showed last spring during an ABS trial run that he has an especially keen eye for which calls to review.

If Raleigh hits 60 home runs again, any improvements he does make behind the dish aren't going to get much play. They'll feel more like a bonus, akin to a stick of gum in a pack full of Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cards.

But since the odds of Raleigh hitting 60 dingers again are somewhere between slim and none, don't discount how important his defense could become this year. The fewer homers he hits, the sharper the focus will be on other things he's doing.