MLB peers’ honors for Mariners star Cal Raleigh feel like a setup for an MVP letdown

The honors are rolling in for Cal Raleigh, as the Seattle Mariners' star catcher has now been crowned as the Player of the Year for 2025 by The Sporting News and by the MLB Players Association.

This is the time of year when awards and accolades begin to feel like a dime a dozen, but the honors that Raleigh has netted are not to be sneezed away. As noted by the Mariners' PR department, they are the most prestigious honors that his fellow players get to vote on:

This has to be a good feeling for Raleigh, and it's hard to fathom anyone who deserves it more than he does. Not that anyone's already forgotten, but what he did in 2025 reads like an impossible checklist to which he gave the old "I'm possible" treatment:

• 1st-time All-Star
• Home Run Derby champion
• Shattered records with a 60-homer season
• Led the Mariners to their first AL West title in 24 years
• Had a 1.081 OPS and 5 HR in the playoffs

That Raleigh did all this as an everyday catcher will always be mind-boggling. And since nobody respects the mental and physical grind that catchers go through as much as their fellow players, it makes sense that Raleigh's peers would honor him accordingly with Player of the Year awards.

Cal Raleigh's Player of the Year awards may not be a preview of victory in the AL MVP race

The only question now, of course, is whether Raleigh has an even bigger award waiting for him on November 13. That is when the MVPs for the 2025 season will be announced, and it seems possible that the Baseball Writers' Association of America will be on the same page as Raleigh's peers.

Possible... yet not a given. Though the Player of the Year awards do tend to foretell MVP winners, the success rate isn't 100 percent. In 2016, Jose Altuve won Player of the Year for The Sporting News, but lost the AL MVP to Mike Trout. And in 2018, J.D. Martinez was the MLBPA's Player of the Year before missing out to then-teammate Mookie Betts in the AL MVP voting.

It's not hard to imagine something similar happening to Raleigh, simply because Aaron Judge A) still exists and B) would still seem to be the favorite for the AL MVP.

Just as a reminder, MVP voters only consider the regular season and turn in their ballots before the postseason even begins. And as amazing as Raleigh was this season, even he couldn't keep Judge from leading all of MLB in WAR, AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS and OPS+ and the American League in runs, walks and total bases. And while the New York Yankees didn't win their division, they did win four more games than the Mariners.

As of late September, Judge was the betting favorite to win the AL MVP, and he also narrowly edged Raleigh in a poll by MLB.com. He was certainly helping his cause at the time, as he finished the year with a 1.487 OPS and 10 homers in his last 19 games.

You have to assume that it wasn't out of disrespect that Judge's peers favored Raleigh for the Player of the Year awards. Beyond being one of the great players of the 21st century, Judge is one of the great human beings in baseball today. The next person who says anything bad about him will be the first.

Between that and the numbers he put up this year, it won't feel like some sort of cosmic injustice if Raleigh loses the AL MVP to Judge. Certainly when compared to, say, Game 7 of the ALCS, it's the kind of loss one could live with, at least in part because it helps to know that the 28-year-old Raleigh likely has more shots at the MVP left in him than the 33-year-old Judge.

And yet, there will be no escaping the feeling that it was the players who got it right.

Whereas the BBWAA voters will have taken a very narrow view on what makes a player "valuable," the players seem to recognize that there's a greatness to Raleigh's season that numbers can't fully capture. And that feels right. He had a season for the ages for a team that had its best season in decades, whereas Judge had a ho-hum season (at least by his standards) for a Yankees team that didn't fully live up to expectations.

So even if it won't be a cosmic injustice if Judge wins the AL MVP, it will still feel like a bummer. As with the Player of the Year awards, the AL MVP is an award that Raleigh truly deserves.