Cal Raleigh's AL MVP candidacy gets an endorsement from future Hall of Famer

The MVP race is coming down to the wire, as Cal Raleigh and Aaron Judge were announced as finalists alongside José Ramírez. That was to be expected.

Thursday's announcement of the winner will send shockwaves through the baseball world, no matter who ends up being crowned most valuable in the league. While the betting markets are heavily favoring the Yankees' superstar, one future Hall of Famer believes the award should belong to Raleigh.

"I'm biased,” said former San Francisco Giants legend Buster Posey, per Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times. “My vote would be for Cal. I think Aaron Judge is unbelievable, but for what Cal did, not only offensively, but to lead a staff and to hit that many homers, go deep in the playoffs, which I know voting is not based on playoffs, but us catchers got to stick together.”

Buster Posey goes to bat for Cal Raleigh as the AL MVP over Aaron Judge

Even if Posey admitted he is biased towards catchers, it's cool to see arguably the greatest catcher of the 21st century agree with Mariners fans that Raleigh is deserving of the MVP award. West Coast bias might play a factor here as well. Both Posey and Raleigh spent their whole careers playing on the West Coast, which tends to get less media coverage than the Eastern counterparts.

If Raleigh does win the MVP, he would become the 17th catcher to win the award, and just the third in this century, joining Posey and 2024 Hall of Fame inductee Joe Mauer. It's a small, selective group, as catchers tend to be forgotten about behind the plate.

Whether or not he wins the award, Raleigh has surely changed that. His historic season included a 60-home run campaign, becoming the first catcher to eclipse 50, and then 60 long balls. Regardless of the result tomorrow night, he has done more than enough to etch his name into the history books.

Still, more hardware to go with his Silver Slugger would be cool. It would also be a win for the Mariners franchise, which hasn't had an MVP since Ichiro Suzuki in 2001.