Mariners' Cal Raleigh has new skill to take his star power higher

It won't be long before so-called "robot umpires" are a fact of life in Major League Baseball, and that matters more to Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh than it does to most.

The 28-year-old is hardly a one-skill backstop, as among his assets are a bat that has produced 91 home runs since 2022 — power update: yup, still good — and an arm that produced an MLB-high 32 caught-stealings in 2024.

Raleigh is also known for pitch framing. It's the art of receiving pitches in such a manner as to convince the home-plate umpire to call a strike, regardless of whether the pitch was in the zone. And as such, you can't blame the guy for not wanting the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS, or "robot umps" to you and me) to make all ball-strike calls in the future.

"I just don't think it's good for the game," Raleigh told the Marine Layer Podcast. "I just don't think that robot umps should be calling the whole game. I think there's a good human element to it."

However, it's doubtful that Raleigh's worst robot-umps nightmare will come true, and there's reason to believe he'll be fine even if MLB adopts the challenge form of the ABS.

The ABS will hurt one of Raleigh's best skills

Though Raleigh lives in fear of the ABS being used to call every pitch, even he granted in the aforementioned interview that the challenge system currently in use this spring is "interesting."

This is good to hear, as it is unlikely that this genie will be going back in the bottle. The ABS won't be used for meaningful games in 2025, but MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told Ronald Blum of the Associated Press in November that he's "interested in having it" for 2026.

This matters to the Mariners for two reasons, starting with the fact that Raleigh will still be with them in 2026. He isn't eligible for free agency until after 2027.

The second reason concerns how Raleigh hypothetically has more to lose from the ABS than he does to gain from it. When he was catching in 2024, he got 430 strikes on pitches outside the zone and was hit with only 259 balls on pitches inside the zone. If every single one of those pitches had been challenged and overturned, he would have recorded 171 fewer strikes for his pitchers.

What if Raleigh is really good at challenging calls?

The good news for the Mariners, though, is right here in this highlight from Saturday's exhibition against the Chicago White Sox, as presented by Daniel Kramer of MLB.com:

Here, you see Raleigh take advantage of the ABS system with a challenge that turned a walk of Luis Robert Jr. into an inning-ending strikeout. It was a close pitch that required careful judgment, and Raleigh aced the test.

As Becky Sullivan of NPR reported, testing of the ABS in the minor leagues has revealed that challenges by pitchers and catchers (54 percent) are more likely to be successful than challenges by hitters (48 percent). It nonetheless stands to reason that there will be outliers on both sides, and that those who are good at using ABS challenges will be valued accordingly.

To this end, it wouldn't be surprising if a great framer like Raleigh also proved to be a great challenger. And if so, it'll be yet another reason for the Mariners to want to sign him to a contract extension that will keep him with the team for the foreseeable future.