Cal Raleigh's contract extension changed the trajectory of the Mariners franchise

The Seattle Mariners have not been one of the most successful franchises in professional sports. Coming into the 2025 season, they were coming off another good-not-great season that ended without a playoff berth for a second straight year after breaking a 21-year playoff drought in 2022. Yet starting in spring training, things were different for the Mariners in 2025.

It would be the first full season with Dan Wilson as manager. After he took over near the end of the season in 2024, the Mariners started to play better, but the biggest change in spring training had nothing to do with performance. A day before the season started, the Mariners announced a long-term extension with stud catcher Cal Raleigh.

How a pre-extension meeting between Cal Raleigh and the Mariners changed everything

Earlier during spring training, the Mariners and Raleigh were in discussions about an extension to buy out some of his remaining arbitration years and keep the switch-hitting catcher in Seattle for the long-term. We now know that before talking finances, Raleigh wanted to sit down president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto and GM Justin Hollander to discuss the teams goals.

After being drafted and developed by the Mariners, Raleigh understood what it meant to be a Mariner and what he was now a part of in Seattle. But before he committed his future and his prime on the field to Seattle, he wanted to make sure that he would be a part of a winning team. He wanted to know how committed the Mariners were to winning in the future, and if he could expect to be winning division championships with a chance to take this team to its first World Series.

We now know more about this from an interview on Seattle Sports 710 between Mike Salk and Hollander, but thinking about this in greater depth shows how important this meeting would be to the future of the team. It showed that 2025 would be a year with a greater sense of urgency from the front office. Raleigh wanted to see the front office put more resources into winning now, and putting more pieces around him to give the team its best chance to win.

Hearing from one of your best players and biggest leaders what their vision is for the team and how committed they are to winning for your organization and city must have made the front office more open to the idea of trying to win for Raleigh and his teammates. For Raleigh to decide to sign long-term with the Mariners, he needed to know that the front office had his back and wanted to achieve the same goals, and we saw that play out throughout the 2025 season.

After a solid but not great first half of the season, the Mariners front office pulled the trigger on two big trades at the deadline. They acquired the two best hitters available in Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez to lock down their infield corners for a second -half surge. Instead of holding prospects or trading for controllable players as they had in years past, the Mariners went and got the best rental players available and they brought much-needed energy and confidence.

Those two trades helped push the Mariners to a winning streak at the end of the season that helped lead them to their first division title in 24 years. The faith that Raleigh put in the Mariners front office was rewarded by not only the historic season that he produced, but the great moves that the Mariners made to help support him and his teammates at the trade deadline.

This was not only a significant moment for this season, but also this offseason. After Josh Naylor tested the waters of free agency, the Mariners made the right move by signing him to a 5-year contract for nearly $100 million. This is the largest free agent contract that Jerry Dipoto has given out to a position player in his tenure by a significant margin.

Based on the actions of the Mariners since their meeting with Raleigh, we've seen them be more committed to winning on the field by acquiring stud rental players by trading prospects for them, not holding them for the future, and by giving the right guy the right deal in free agency to keep him a Mariner and give the team the best chance to win in 2026. We also have heard the team talk about a higher level of expectations for 2026 and beyond.