New rule gives Mariners' Cal Raleigh a leg up in MVP rematch with Aaron Judge

The ABS Challenge System is about to show up in big-league games, and the funniest twist is that it might end up boosting one of the players who’s been most open about not loving the idea in the first place.

Cal Raleigh has made it clear he’s not exactly campaigning for robot umps. That’s totally fair. He doesn’t have to like the concept to benefit from the reality: a challenge-based strike zone is still a tool, and Raleigh is the kind of catcher who can turn tools into leverage.

Mariners’ Cal Raleigh could quietly gain ground on Aaron Judge thanks to MLB’s new rule

ABS isn’t coming as a full takeover where every pitch is instantly adjudicated by a computer. It’s coming as a limited challenge system — which means the margins still matter. And Raleigh lives on the margins at the plate. Pitchers throw only 43.7 percent of pitches to him within the strike zone, a rate that falls in the 9th percentile, because they’d rather try to work around him than challenge him. 

That’s why the advantage doesn’t just go to hitters with elite zone awareness. It goes to the teams with decision-makers who can identify the most valuable wrong calls in real time. Catchers are also at the center of that.

Raleigh isn’t just catching the pitch and receiving it. He’s processing the whole sequence: the intended location, the hitter’s reaction, the pitcher’s body language, the umpire’s tendencies, and the game state. In the challenge format, that awareness becomes actionable. 

That’s why the ABS conversation is sneaky in Seattle. It’s easy to frame it like the new system is built for superstars like Aaron Judge, and to be fair, Judge probably does stand to gain. He has a refined sense of the zone, and he’s also dealt with his share of calls that just don’t match the shape of his strike zone. Over time, ABS should clean up some of that noise.

But here’s the angle that matters more for Mariners fans: Judge benefits when Judge is at the plate. Raleigh can benefit the Mariners on practically every inning they pitch.

A catcher who’s sharp with challenges can steal back strike calls that drifted into ball territory, erase walks that should’ve been strikeouts, and flip counts in ways that change entire at-bats. Over 162 games, those flips won’t stay little. 

If this turns into an MVP-shaped narrative again, that’s where Raleigh’s case gets interesting. His value was never only about his bat. The new rule just gives the league a louder, more visible way to understand what catchers actually do. Raleigh may not love robot umps, but if ABS is here, Seattle has the right guy to tap his helmet.