Mariners' Cal Raleigh crushed weak AL catcher field with Silver Slugger triumph

There are intricacies to how Silver Slugger Award winners are chosen. It's managers and coaches who do the voting, and they are instructed to vote according to their own impressions and players' statistics. You can imagine there being agonizing choices, and the Seattle Mariners were arguably on the wrong end of a couple this year.

But then you have Cal Raleigh winning the Silver Slugger for American League catchers.

It might not be the highest honor he claims this year, as he's officially up against Aaron Judge and José Ramírez for the AL MVP. Yet even before the AL Silver Slugger winners were revealed exclusively on FanSided's The Baseball Insiders live stream on YouTube, this was pretty much the awards equivalent of one of those posterizing slam dunks.

Cal Raleigh crushes the AL catching field to earn his first AL Silver Slugger

The 28-year-old Raleigh earned his Silver Slugger on his power alone, as he broke several records en route to becoming only the seventh player to hit 60 home runs in a season. Home runs by a switch-hitter? Check. By a Mariner? Also, check. By a catcher? Oh, you better believe that's a check.

So prolific was Raleigh as a home run hitter that he doubled up both of his fellow finalists for the AL Silver Slugger at catcher. Salvador Perez of the Kansas City Royals (already a five-time Silver Slugger) slammed 30 homers. Shea Langeliers of the Athletics did him only one better, finishing with 31.

Perhaps there would have been cause for debate if Perez or Langeliers had left Raleigh in the dust in other key statistical departments. But save for Langeliers notching a .277 average to Raleigh's .247 and Perez's .236, this is broadly not the case. "Big Dumper" easily outshined his fellow catchers in OBP, SLG, OPS and OPS+, not to mention counting stats like walks, hits and total bases.

Not to be lost in the conversation about Raleigh's 2025 season is that he did it despite his home stadium. T-Mobile Park is the least friendly ballpark for hitters in all of MLB, yet his home/road home run splits were nearly even. He hit 28 at home and 32 on the road.

This goes to show what good coaching and efficiency can do for you. Raleigh learned a peculiar tee drill from Edgar Martinez during spring training, meant to keep him strong on his back leg and get more vertical with his swing. The result was not just more fly balls, but more pulled fly balls in a season than had ever been recorded before.

It's a shame about the two other Mariners who were finalists for Silver Slugger awards. Jorge Polanco lost out to Jazz Chisholm Jr. at second base, while Julio Rodríguez missed out to Judge, Byron Buxton and Riley Greene among outfielders.

There have been bigger outrages, however. Though his 134 OPS+ technically led second basemen, Polanco only started 34 games at the keystone. And while Julio did go 30-30 and finish second to only Judge among AL outfielders in batting runs, he likely hurt his cause by not getting his bat going until July. Further, both Buxton and Greene finished ahead of Julio in homers and OPS.

All the same, Raleigh has taken his rightful place as the eighth Silver Slugger winner in Mariners history. And out of all the seven who came before him, arguably none of them earned it quite as thoroughly as he did.