SEATTLE -- Cal Raleigh hasn’t looked like this since the night he hit 60.
Yet even during that historic 2025 season, he never had a game like this.
The Mariners’ big backstop went for a full-fledged hat trick on Monday night against the Phillies, crushing three home runs for the first time in his career -- and more so, putting tangible evidence to what’s been brewing for weeks.
The Big Dumper might be heating up, and at the most opportune time.
Raleigh went yard in the first inning against Zack Wheeler, in the fifth -- again off Wheeler -- then once more in the seventh off reliever Chase Shugart, opening the floodgates toward a 9-2 win, as Seattle gained ground in the American League playoff race.
“This last month will say a lot about us as a group and us as a team,” Raleigh said. “I think this is kind of where the boys are separated from the men. I believe in this group, and despite the struggles -- whatever it's been this year -- that kind of creates endurance. And from endurance you get character, and from character, you get hope. And that's what I see in this group.”
In T-Mobile Park’s history, no Mariners hitter had homered thrice in the same game until Monday. And overall since this venue opened in July 1999, only one visiting player had -- fellow catcher Victor Martinez, who did so for Cleveland on July 16, 2004.
Moreover, Raleigh also tied Jay Buhner and Edgar Martinez for the second-most multi-homer games in Mariners history, with 22, behind only Ken Griffey Jr., who had 40.
He also became just the 13th player in franchise history with a three-homer game, but he’s only the second catcher among that group -- joining his manager, Dan Wilson, who did so on April 11, 1996.
“I think there's no comparison,” Wilson joked.
We’ve seen rumblings from Raleigh that suggested he was on the cusp of turning a corner, even if it hadn’t correlated to the box score.
Since homering in Houston last Sunday, Raleigh is 7-for-21 and has a .500 on-base percentage. His exit velocity in August (93.3 mph) is his highest for any month of the season (88.4 mph from March/April through July).
And Monday night’s first homer -- against a 95 mph elevated heater from Wheeler -- was precisely the type of pitch he’d been most susceptible to all season. Raleigh entered play with a .351 slugging percentage on those pitches in those locations, compared to .538 in 2025.
“It all starts with the fastball,” Raleigh said. “I think that's been the hard part this year, is just obviously missing some fastballs here and there and putting myself in bad counts.
“I don't feel like I lose at-bats when I pop up or strike out. I feel like it's when you do get that mistake and at this level in the big leagues, when they do make that mistake, it's about capitalizing on it and making sure that you are moving it forward and you are taking advantage, because they're so good.”
To get to October, the Mariners will need some semblance of a high-powered Raleigh, last year’s runner-up for AL MVP who’s looked anything but in 2026.
Entering Monday, Raleigh had homered just 14 times before stepping into the batter’s box in this one, and hadn’t had a mult-homer game all season. That’s correlated to the sport’s largest dropoff in slugging percentage (from .589 to .304, entering Monday).
In fact, the last time he went yard twice in the same game was last Sept. 24 -- when he crushed No. 59 and 60 against Colorado, and the Mariners clinched the AL West title.
The totality of that night will go down as one of the most memorable in franchise history. But it’s felt like eons ago in this season that’s been equally maddening as mediocre, at least by the club’s expectations.
“We've endured a lot this year,” Raleigh said, “and we're fighting with everything we’ve got right now. And I like where the club's at. But that being said, obviously, the job's not finished, and we've got some work to do. And this last month will tell us a lot.”
The Mariners can erase the past four months of frustration, however, by pushing through to this October -- and they could not care less if they’d be the beneficiaries of playing in one of the sport’s most historically weak divisions.
They’ve just got to get there.
And nights like Monday -- against a Phillies team firmly in the playoff race which arrived in Seattle on a nine-game win streak -- showed the Mariners’ full might to do so.