SEATTLE -- The Home Run Derby at Truist Park in Atlanta is still seven weeks away, but if he keeps this pace, Cal Raleigh sure seems like a shoo-in to be invited.
The Mariners’ power-hitting catcher cleared the fence twice again on Tuesday night at T-Mobile Park while helping lift the Mariners to a 9-1 win over the Nationals. And remarkably, the well of superlatives describing his breakout season appears to be nowhere near running dry.
It was Raleigh’s third multi-homer game of the season and 13th of his career -- but it was the first time that he'd done so batting right-handed for both. David Segui, who achieved the feat on May 5, 1998, vs. the White Sox, is the only other switch-hitter in franchise history to achieve that feat.
“I definitely feel the confidence is there,” Raleigh said, “in the sense of, obviously, early in my career, I got turned around a lot right-handed. And I was just not getting the reps there, the consistent reps. If a lefty was on the mound, maybe that'd be a day I got off or something like that. So I just think it all started when I started getting everyday reps and getting that confidence back.”
With 19 homers this season, Raleigh moved ahead of Aaron Judge for the American League lead, and he trails only Shohei Ohtani’s 20 for tops in the Majors.
Moreover, Raleigh broke a tie with Roy Campanella in 1955 for the most by a primary-position catcher in his team’s first 53 games of a season. “Big Dumper” is on pace for a whopping 58, which would shatter Salvador Pérez’s record of 48 in 2021 for the most in a season by a catcher.
Raleigh has led the position in homers in each year since Perez’s record-breaking season, with a career-high 34 in 2024, when he passed Mike Piazza for most homers in a catcher’s first four seasons.
“Those are some old names, so it’s pretty cool,” Raleigh said. “I say this a lot, but probably one day I’ll look back and be pretty thankful. It’s a pretty cool thing to look at.”
Perhaps above all, the Mariners advanced to 13-3 this season when Raleigh homers.
Raleigh also had the best seat in the house for a breakout performance for starting pitcher Logan Evans, who masterfully twirled eight innings of one-run ball, thanks to the rookie’s remarkable efficiency.
“Every time I've won, or the team's won when I've pitched, he's also hit a home run,” Evans said. “So it's a pretty good equation.”
It was the longest outing by a Mariners starter this season and easily the longest pro outing for Seattle’s 12th-round Draft pick in 2023, who continued to make the most of his opportunity as a fill-in while Logan Gilbert and Bryce Miller rehab their way back from the injured list.
Evans needed just 88 pitches (65 strikes) to reach that length, with the lone blemish to his outing being a massive, 448-foot solo homer to red-hot James Wood on middle-middle cutter over the heart of the plate in the fourth.
Evans surrendered three other hits with one walk and four strikeouts, and the only real jam he faced was in the eighth, when he surrendered a leadoff double then a walk but escaped with three straight putouts -- capped by a running catch by Randy Arozarena in foul territory, which evoked some raw emotion from Evans as he walked off the mound.
“Seeing him run that down, that's kind of where I threw my hands up,” Evans said. “There was just a burst of emotion.”
Adding to the performance’s pedigree was that Washington exclusively deployed an all-lefty lineup, marking the third time in Mariners history that they’ve faced a starting nine of only lefties.
The pitch count and sizable lead were the primary factors in why Evans didn’t throw the increasingly rare complete game, which was last done by a Mariners pitcher on July 4, 2023, when Gilbert went the distance.
Mariners manager Dan Wilson -- old school by nature -- certainly considered the achievement before making the final decision.
“I mean, of course,” Wilson said, “But I think at the same time, he did a really nice job.”