Mariners could not have asked Terry Francona for a better Cal Raleigh wake-up call

By now, everyone's seen that "Hal Baleigh" commercial more times than they can count. And as this season has gone on, it has begun to resemble the Bizarro World rendition of Cal Raleigh's reality in that ad. Teams are beyond being unafraid of him. They want to pitch to him.

And on Monday, the moment that the disrespect was most obvious proved to be the moment that Raleigh refused to put up with it any longer.

Simply as the dagger of an 8-0 beatdown of the Cincinnati Reds, Raleigh's seventh-inning grand slam off the left-handed Caleb Ferguson was sweet enough. It was also righteous. Reds manager Terry Francona had chosen to mess around by intentionally walking Dominic Canzone to load the bases for Raleigh. Him subsequently finding out was the only just outcome.

"Ah, yeah," was Raleigh's response when he was asked if he was surprised by Francona's decision.

Truth be told, Francona didn't make the wrong call. It was a choice between facing a hitter with a 139 OPS+ and one with a 65 OPS+. That alone throws the whole "2025 AL MVP runner-up" thing out the window, and Canzone's and Raleigh's respective splits against lefties hardly complicated the matter:

• Dominic Canzone vs. LHP: .434 wOBA
• Cal Raleigh vs. LHP: .203 wOBA

For Francona, the idea was to give Canzone the open bag at first base to set up the double play. Once again, the stats back him up. Raleigh has already grounded into five double plays this year, after doing so six times all of last year.

Even so, one does wonder if the future Hall of Fame manager saw the writing on the wall. The IBB to Canzona may have been good strategy on paper, but it also meant taking one of the best players of 2025 and trying to rub his nose in his 2026 struggles. It's no wonder Raleigh didn't take kindly to it.

Cal Raleigh's grand slam is the latest hope for the Mariners that he can get his groove back

It's important to not get too excited about Raleigh's grand slam. It's only one good swing in a season that has been too full of bad swings. And he didn't really prove anything with it. We know he can hit a hanging breaking ball. It's really fastballs (.105 AVG) that have bedeviled him all season.

As a proof of concept, though, the grand slam works just fine as a real-world manifestation of Raleigh's new mindset. As he told Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times, he wants to play with more of an edge in the second half. As in, "We’re going to come to the yard and beat your [expletive] every single day."

When a guy says something like that, he can't go out there and fold when the opposing manager dares to challenge him. And if that happened, the notion that the 2025 version of Raleigh will eventually show up in 2026 would have gotten another bad reality check.

Instead, maybe that challenge was exactly what Raleigh needed.

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