Cal Raleigh needed one AB in his 1st Mariners rehab game to show he's still snakebit

Long-time fans of The Simpsons will likely remember when Homer sold his soul to the devil for a donut. And anyone who watched Married with Children will surely recall Al Bundy making a similar deal, in exchange for taking the Chicago Bears to the Super Bowl. Well, it's got us wondering what the heck Cal Raleigh agreed to before hitting 60 home runs last season, because he's having a nightmare 2026.

Raleigh started this season looking the exact opposite of his 2025 AL MVP-worthy campaign, not being able to hit worth a lick. At one point he went 0-for-38 and came within three hitless at-bats of the Mariners franchise record, set by Jarred Kelenic in 2021. It turned out he was trying to play through a right oblique strain, but in the end he made it worse and wound up on the injured list for the first time in his Major League career.

A mocking case of deja vu for Cal Raleigh in Everett

At the time we believed this was actually for the best and now Raleigh's on his way back, taking the field for his first ever rehab assignment on Sunday, in High-A Everett. However, with everything that's gone wrong, it would seem a certain someone is also displaying their "devilish" sense of humor, as if to mock the Mariners catcher.

Look no further than what happened in his first at-bat:

Seriously, you can't even make it up -- a towering drive which got robbed at the right field wall. We're sure Mariners fans painfully remember when the Angels' Jo Adell did his Superman act earlier this season, which included a mirror image of what happened to Raleigh on Sunday:

Aside from the parallel, this is also as much about vibes as it is specific plays. This really has just been a weird year for Raleigh in general.

Let's not forget all of the World Baseball Classic drama he had to endure, while he was away with Team USA. As with the Mariners prior to going on the Injured List, Raleigh just couldn't buy a hit. He went 0-for-9 and ended up being benched, meaning he didn't get to play in the semifinals or final. And that wasn't even the worst of it, with the Randy Arozarena "Handshakegate" incident.

The whole fiasco was entirely unnecessary, even though we attach more of the blame for the fallout on Arozarena than to Raleigh. In any event, there was genuine concern lingering effects could compromise the camaraderie in the Mariners clubhouse. Sure the two teammates subsequently resolved any differences, but it was still an ugly situation that could/should have been avoided.

Obviously there's still lots of time for Raleigh to come back and salvage this season, which seems like a reasonable outcome assuming his oblique strain is now a thing of the past. Because a healthy version of the 2025 All-Star makes the Mariners a more genuine threat to challenge for that first World Series berth.

That is, assuming he's now over the string of bad luck and finalized his side of any deals he may or may not have made previously…

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