Cal Raleigh’s Griffey moment highlights Mariners’ hidden October edge

Another day, another case of Cal Raleigh staring a hallowed home run record in the face and not backing down. In fact, he even made it a two-for-one special in Kansas City.

After tying the record on Sunday to help the Seattle Mariners make it nine wins in a row, "Big Dumper" clubbed his 55th home run on Tuesday to leapfrog Mickey Mantle for the single-season record for home runs by a switch-hitter. It was with a solo shot in the third inning off Michael Wacha.

Apparently not content to stop there, Raleigh launched a two-run homer his next time up in the fourth. It was his 56th of the year, tying Ken Griffey Jr. for the Mariners' single-season record.

Between Raleigh's historic blasts and the fact that the Mariners were victorious yet again with a 12-5 win over the Royals, it's a dizzying time for Seattle fans. This still feels like a familiar movie with an ending nobody wants to see again, but it's getting hard not to feel just a little spoiled.

Cal Raleigh has his sights set on 60, and the Mariners are addressing a key complaint

Alas, even Raleigh's 55th and 56th homers may only do so much for him in the AL MVP race, which seems to once again be firmly in the hands of Aaron Judge. He is simply crushing Raleigh in too many key categories, and our pals at Yanks Go Yard aren't wrong about how huge he just came up in the Yankees' biggest stretch of the year.

All the same, Raleigh still has 11 games to break Griffey's franchise record. That seems like a given, which points to the real question of whether the 28-year-old can hit four more to get to 60 — or, heck, even six more to match Judge's AL record of 62 from three years ago.

It seems unwise to put anything past Raleigh, whose home run pace is still going strong even as his hits have dried up since the start of July. He homered every 9.3 at-bats through June, compared to every 12.6 at-bats since then. The latter would have been a league-best mark as recently as 2016.

While we're on the topic of things to be optimistic about, the Mariners also got a five-hit, three-homer night (just the second in Mariners history after Mickey Brantley in 1987) from Dominic Canzone on Tuesday. Obviously, this was also crucial in them topping 10 runs for the second time in as many games.

More to the point, here's the Mariners' scoring output for their last three road games:

• September 6 in Atlanta: 10 runs
• September 7 in Atlanta: 18 runs
• September 16 in Kansas City: 12 runs

This makes it 10 times overall that the Mariners have reached double-digit runs in a road game, the fourth-most in MLB after the Yankees, Cubs and Red Sox.

For all the very real problems — such as pitching and...well, pitching — the Mariners have on the road, hitting just isn't one of them. Even before they dismantled the Royals on Tuesday, they had a 114 wRC+ away from T-Mobile Park. It was the second-best figure in the majors, and a marked improvement even on the 103 wRC+ they had away from home last year.

That the Mariners are 35-41 on the road despite this is the bad news. But if a team must be bad on the road, the best way to do it is to bring one thing to the other team's backyard that is liable to cause problems. Their offense is that thing, and there's little reason to think its edge will be blunted in the playoffs if the Mariners get there. Even their competition gets the willies when looking at this lineup.

Of course, going on the road in October is not as big a concern for the Mariners now as it was even a few days ago. Tuesday's win allowed them to hold their 0.5-game lead over the Houston Astros in the AL West. If they continue to hold, they'll be guaranteed homefield advantage for at least one series in the playoffs.

In the meantime, any further help Cal Raleigh can provide is more than welcome.