Mariners coach's WBC excuse for Cal Raleigh's downfall is past its expiration date

Last year, Cal Raleigh donned the Superman cape and had a season for the ages as he became just the seventh player in Major League history to hit 60 home runs. This year, he's been playing like he's carrying a piece of kryptonite in his back pocket. His dramatic fall from grace has led to plenty of questions about what's gone wrong, with Mariners bench coach Manny Acta now coming out and placing a significant portion of the blame at the feet of the World Baseball Classic.

As per Zac Hereth of Seattle Sports, Acta was being interviewed by MLB Network's MLB Now, when the inevitable subject of Raleigh's struggles came up. The long-time member of the M's coaching staff stressed that he's not one to make excuses, but he firmly believes the WBC didn't help last year's AL MVP runner up. He said:

"You can get nine at-bats in four days just hanging out in spring training, and I think (not having) that really hurt him. Then he came back and probably tried to do way too much the last week of spring training, trying to accumulate the at-bats and the playing time that he missed during the Classic, and that kind of hurt his oblique."

Manny Acta

One of those times when being a team-first player actually put the team in worse spot

Acta went on to praise Raleigh for being such a team-first guy and attempting to play through the pain. However, as much as we can appreciate this, the irony is that trying to keep playing actually made things worse for everyone concerned. At one point the 2025 All-Star even went on an 0-for-38 hitless streak which came within three of the franchise record. (Set by Jarred Kelenic in 2021.)

In fairness, this pans out and makes sense. After all, Raleigh only got 14 plate appearances in several weeks, while he was away for the WBC with Team USA. Then, when he returned to spring training with the Mariners in Peoria, he had 15 plate appearances in four days.

Not helping the whole situation, as we wrote about back in March during the WBC, it was reported that Raleigh wasn't in a great place with his swing. At the time we weren't too concerned, considering he batted just .186 last spring and then went on to have his historic season. Unfortunately though, the subsequent right oblique strain compromised his attempts to get his swing going and he has been playing catchup ever since.

Cal Raleigh needs to shake off his extended funk and rediscover his Midas touch with the M's

The thing is though, no matter how much Raleigh was impacted by playing in the WBC and then dealing with his injury, this is no longer relevant. He's now healthy and been back off the Injured List for nearly a month, but yet he's still not hitting. In 21 games since his return, he's only batting .183 with two home runs, a .624 OPS and 88 wRC+.

Look, plenty of players can and do have extended slumps, so in this respect Raleigh is no different. The optics also look worse, just because of how dominant he was last season. Add in being projected for a single-season career-low .168 batting average and having a negative bWAR, and it might as well be Clark Kent standing at the plate.

Ultimately, we can get on board with the WBC wrecking the first half of Raleigh's campaign, but it shouldn't be having this much of a lasting impact. We're now past the point where he needs to get going. It's time for him to don his red cape once again and become a real life superhero, by saving the Mariners' season.

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