One day after setting the MLB record for home runs by a catcher before the All-Star break, the Seattle Mariners’ Cal Raleigh put his name at the top of another historic list.
Raleigh hit his 30th homer during Saturday’s 10-7 loss to the Chicago Cubs, the most by a switch-hitter. That moved him ahead of Mickey Mantle, José Ramírez and Lance Berkman on that particular list.
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Additionally, Raleigh is the first player to hit 30 home runs in his team’s first 75 games since 2001, when Barry Bonds and Luis Gonzalez achieved that feat. That’s happened 12 times in MLB history, with eight hitters reaching that mark before the season’s unofficial halfway point.
One of those hitters is Ken Griffey Jr., making Raleigh the second Mariners hitter to reach 30 homers by the All-Star break. Griffey did it three times during his career, hitting 35 homers in 1998, 33 in 1994 and 30 in 1997.
Raleigh also joined an exclusive list for catchers with his 30th homer, becoming the fourth player at the position to notch three seasons with 30 homers or more. He hit 30 home runs in 2023 and 34 last season. That puts Raleigh with Mike Piazza, Johnny Bench and Roy Campanella as the only other catchers with multiple seasons of 30-plus home runs.
Raleigh’s historic homer came in the ninth inning off Cubs reliever Daniel Palencia, smacking a 99.4-mph fastball high in the strike zone to the opposite field.
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“To get in his last at-bat after a day of 95 degrees, he’s a fighter,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said after the game, via MLB.com.
“The Big Dumper” hit his home run batting left-handed, after hitting two batting right-handed on Friday. For the season, 20 of his homers are from the left side of the plate with 10 coming as a right-handed batter.
Overall, Raleigh is batting .272/.377/.649 with 14 doubles, 64 RBI and nine stolen bases with his 30 homers in 324 plate appearances. But with Saturday’s defeat, the Mariners dropped to 38-37, putting them five games behind the Houston Astros (44-33) for second place in the AL West.
On the other side, the Cubs improved to 46-30, giving them a 4.5-game lead in the NL Central over the Milwaukee Brewers. Ian Happ and Kyle Tucker began the bottom of the first with back-to-back homers, while Michael Busch and Pete Crow-Armstrong also went deep. Happ drove in four runs, while Busch had three RBI.
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