The Cal Raleigh surge Mariners have been waiting for might finally be here

By this point in the season, Cal Raleigh occupies a weird niche for Seattle Mariners fans. He's a guy for whom expectations are now quite low, yet for whom hopes remain sky-high. So when he does something like hit three home runs in one game, there's an awkward dance of emotions. Excitement? Obviously. Unease? A bit of that, too.

It's the kind of dance that can only be learned through experience, specifically the one Mariners fans have had with "Big Dumper" over the last two years. In 2025, there was the 60-homer campaign that was hard to believe even as it happened. In 2026, there's the very-sub-.200 average that is likewise hard to believe, but in all the wrong ways.

And yet, Raleigh is three home runs richer after taking Zack Wheeler (twice!) and Chase Shugart deep in the Mariners' 9-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday. He now has 17 on the season, which sure beats the heck out of 14 even if he did already have 47 homers at the same point last year.

The historical significance is a nice feather in Raleigh's cap. He's somehow the first Mariners hitter to ever have a three-homer game at T-Mobile Park. He's also the second Mariners catcher to go yard three times in a game, joining none other than Dan Wilson.

Mariners are finally seeing signs that Cal Raleigh can be his near-MVP self again

The amazing thing about the season Raleigh is having is not how bad he's been. It's how consistently bad he's been. He has yet to have a single month in which he's batted over .200. Even in a relatively "warm" August, he's still batting just .177 with a .797 OPS.

The forward momentum is there, though, especially if you break down his contact quality for July and August versus everything that came before:

Granted, there's nothing like a multi-homer night for juicing a table like this one. Yet knowing how Raleigh was trending even before August, Monday's outburst looks like less of a fluke and more of a culmination.

As Eno Sarris of The Athletic highlighted, the real problem Raleigh had been struggling with more so concerned his approach. This won't be news to Mariners fans who have been watching the 29-year-old closely. Raleigh was never a Tony Gwynn type, but watching him expand the zone and swing and miss as if the video was on an endless loop was tantamount to torture.

Well, he's coming around here, too. His 32.6 chase percentage for August is in line with last year's mark of 31.8 percent. He's also gone 10 games without a multi-strikeout game. He specifically alluded to feeling better against the fastball after Monday's game, and the data bears that out. He has an expected slugging percentage of .592 against fastballs in August, by far his highest of any month.

When it comes down to it, Raleigh is 7-for-21 with five homers, seven walks and only four strikeouts over his last eight games. This is as hot as he's been all year, and there's real cause to believe it will end up being more than just a blip. With the Mariners fighting for their playoff lives, the timing couldn't be better.

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