SEATTLE -- It was barely more than a 24-hour span, but after homering in back-to-back games, is Cal Raleigh starting to heat up?
There wasn’t much else for Seattle to be excited about after Tuesday’s 5-2 loss to the A’s, other than the potential that their all-world catcher might be unlocking something at the plate.
That the homers were practically the antitheses of each other suggests more promising signs.
However, that wasn’t necessarily at the forefront of Raleigh’s analysis after the Mariners scored just two runs or fewer for the 10th time in 25 games, over which they’re 1-9.
“I'm just trying to lock in,” Raleigh said, “stay locked-in, trying to get to that kind of -- I don't know, it's hard to explain -- that state of committing to something, staying on it, locking in every single pitch and not letting a result dictate an outcome.”
On Tuesday, Raleigh yanked a first-pitch slider from left-hander Jacob Lopez in the fifth inning and sent the sky-high blast just barely beyond the left-field wall to tie the game at 2-2. On Monday, he connected on an outer-half fastball from righty J.T. Ginn during the first inning and punched an opposite-field shot.
One was batting righty; the other lefty. One was against a breaking ball; the other a heater. One ambushed the first pitch; the other came after working into a good count.
Including the postseason, Raleigh hadn’t homered in consecutive games since last Sept. 20-21. Through 25 games last year, he’d already homered nine times compared to four in 2026.
“I know the swing is good,” Raleigh said. “It’s the same swing I've had since I was 9 years old. So, like I said, I'm really just trying to trust the approach, trust the plan, commit to it every single pitch. To me, it's just winning one pitch at a time and taking the small victories.”
The statistics have been unflattering, and not just by the lofty measures he set en route to 60 homers and a runner-up finish for the AL MVP Award. Raleigh is slashing .177/.266/.333 (.599 OPS) with a 29.4% strikeout rate.
But for an offense looking for anything to build upon, its best player from a year ago putting together his most productive two-game stretch offered a small slice of optimism.
He finished Tuesday 2-for-3 with the homer, a single and a walk, registering just his second multi-hit game of the season.
“You start swinging a little harder,” Raleigh said, “and you start pulling your shoulder a little more, and you start looking for results over good quality at-bats. And sometimes, you've just got to take a step back, and like I said, just try to win a pitch at a time or try to find a barrel and do little things. And I think that's kind of where I'm at right now.”
Raleigh’s challenges have primarily been rooted in not doing damage against pitches he’s supposed to.
Entering this series, he was slugging just .346 on in-zone fastballs, way below the .453 league average and even more below his whopping .725 in 2025, which was fifth-best among 406 qualified hitters. Moreover, he was missing on 37.7% of the in-zone fastballs he’d swung at, way up from the 14.9% league average and his 20.2% rate last year.
Homers are typically the result of mistake pitches, and you don’t hit 60 of them without cashing in on most of those.
There also might be the reality that, because of Seattle’s 10-15 start, he might be putting added pressure on himself -- though he downplayed that.
A key detail in Raleigh’s two homers was that they were with the bases empty; inopportune for a club seeking any semblance to what it envisioned when constructing this roster.
Yet, creating traffic hasn’t been the problem. The Mariners have a .318 on-base percentage that’s tied for 16th in the Majors. But their .219 batting average is 27th, and more glaringly, their .355 slugging percentage is 26th.
Yes, hitting in Seattle in April is not conducive for power. But beyond Raleigh, Julio Rodríguez (despite an 18-game on-base streak with only four extra-base hits in that span) and Josh Naylor (despite his first doubles on Monday) are also looking to get going.
Talent and track record suggests that these players are too good to hit like this forever. But until that group takes a bigger step forward, it’s hard to envision how the Mariners collectively do so as well.