Cal Raleigh's coldness for Mariners is more unpleasant than anyone wants to admit

The Mariners weren't supposed to have offensive struggles this year. Their team OPS of .740 was 10th in MLB last year and the team only added more lineup help this winter. But after 20 games, Seattle's 8-12 record places them at the bottom of the division and their .651 OPS (25th in MLB) is a big reason why.

Their offensive production is being disproportionately upheld by a few unsuspecting players like Luke Raley, whose 1.002 OPS leads the team and is a big improvement over last year. In the meantime, the Mariners' most recognizable faces have remained ice-cold. The most jarring regression has been Cal Raleigh, who has gone from a 7.4 rWAR season and AL MVP runner-up to an OPS of just .539. The worst part is, a peek under the hood suggests deeper issues may be at play.

Cal Raleigh has been getting dominated by fastballs this season

When looking at his numbers, one might jump to pointing out that his whiff (34.4) and strikeout (33.7) rates are comfortably in the bottom quartile of qualified hitters this year. However, they weren't much better last year.

He has always been one to take swings and, like many of today's best sluggers, has deliberately sacrificed swing-and-miss for more power. He has a career average of just .224 but a career slugging of .477 and when combined with a 10.8 walk rate, he profiles as a pretty solid three true outcome hitter.

Instead, it's his hard-hit rate and average exit velocity that have seen the most meaningful decline. His average exit velocity of just 83.1 mph is in the same ballpark as soft-hitting speedy players like Chandler Simpson (82.9 mph) and Brandon Lockridge (83.7 mph). Similarly, his hard-hit rate of 26.1 is comparable to that of Sal Frelick (25.0) and Isaac Paredes (25.6).

When looking at his results by pitch, the problem is clear. His numbers against four-seam fastballs this year are significantly worse than they were last year.

Of the 60 home runs he hit last year, 39 of them came against fastballs but this year, he's having trouble squaring them up or even making contact. His bat speed is down but only by 0.6 mph, so there must be another issue. His batting stance has varied by a few inches, but it's unclear whether these differences are enough to explain the drastic decline in quality of contact.

In a breakdown of his cold start for ESPN, David Schoenfield mentioned similar struggles in an article released earlier in the week. His conclusion was that it's still too early to be worried but with things this bad against the most frequently thrown pitch in baseball, can Raleigh still put up a great season?

Last season, Raleigh had a similar cold start, finishing the team's ninth game with a .539 OPS but by the time the Mariners were 20 games in, he had taken his OPS all the way to .895 thanks to hitting seven home runs and three doubles in that span. This year, he has seemed uncharacteristically shaky in the batter's box.

As disappointing as he has been so far, Raleigh can't and shouldn't be catching all of the heat for the team's recent misfortunes. Seattle's most consistent pitcher has already had a calamitous outing and even when they do the right thing, the team simply can't seem to catch a break.

142 games is still plenty of time for the Mariners to figure things out, but they have their work cut out for them. Whether it's against fastballs or in the division, Raleigh and the rest of the team have plenty of catching up to do down the stretch.

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