Cal Raleigh Lands on IL as Mariners Tread Water in AL West

Cal Raleigh is, apparently, not invincible.

Raleigh landed on the injured list Thursday for the first time in his career. He’d been dealing with “general soreness” in his right side since early May, but seemed to aggravate it on a couple of plays in the eighth inning of Wednesday’s 4-3 loss to the Astros. There’s no timeline for his return.

With the game tied 2-2, nobody out, and Braden Shewmake on first base, Brice Matthews attempted a sacrifice bunt. The ball trickled back to Mariners reliever Eduard Bazardo, who scooped it up and sailed it into center field. Scrambling for the ball, Julio Rodríguez booted it back toward the infield, picked it up near the edge of the dirt, and came up firing home, but Josh Naylor cut it off before it could get there because Shewmake was held at third. However, while getting in position to field the throw, Raleigh made an awkward shuffle, appearing to tweak his already-sore side. He winced in considerable pain, but stayed in the game.

Bazardo then hit Zach Cole to load the bases, prompting the Mariners to bring the infield in. Christian Vázquez followed with a hard chopper to J.P. Crawford at short, who looked to start a double play with a strong throw home. But in attempting to make the turn, Raleigh’s leg gave out from underneath him. He stumbled to the ground with the ball still in hand, and exited after the inning.

Raleigh will get imaging Friday when the team returns to Seattle. The official word is “right oblique strain,” which wasn’t always known despite weeks of concern. Raleigh was a late scratch from the Mariners lineup on May 2, sitting out with what was described at the time as “general soreness.” The Mariners are usually forthcoming about the type of injury a player is dealing with, so their lack of specificity on the matter was notable. The night before, Raleigh took a foul ball square in the mask and another off his… self-endorsed cup, underscoring the beating catchers take on a daily basis. It’s not unusual for him to be dinged up, but it is unusual for him to miss time. Raleigh later told Lookout Landing that it was actually his side that was bothering him, and he didn’t know how or when it happened. He sat for three games and the Mariners played down a man.

When he returned, Raleigh found himself in the middle of an 0-for stretch that would eventually reach 43 plate appearances. He broke the slump Tuesday with a pair of singles, flashing a big grin as his teammates celebrated.

That clip struck me, as I’m not sure I’d seen Raleigh smile all season. Big, toothy grins are less common for the always-serious Raleigh than they are for, say, Rodríguez, but he’s appeared especially discouraged early in 2026, often looking for answers that just haven’t been there.

It started before the injury. Raleigh posted a 59 wRC+ through April 19 with very little power. But then, for a moment, it looked like he’d snapped out of it, hitting five home runs in seven games at the end of the month. Then the 0-for began, then the soreness, then the 0-for continued, and now he’ll sit for several weeks. Raleigh will return from the injured list with a 63 wRC+, a .289 xwOBA, a 31.5% strikeout rate, and a 10.9% HR/FB rate.

Exactly what’s plagued Raleigh this year is not obvious. Again, he didn’t report any injury until his line was already under water. Maybe it’s bothered him longer than he’s let on (he played much of 2022 with a broken thumb), or maybe it hasn’t. But there’s no obvious sign of an injury sapping his bat speed or sprint speed, and yet he’s down by pretty much every performance indicator, as Mike Petriello recently pointed out for MLB.com.

My sense is Raleigh’s struggles in the first quarter of the season are mostly related to timing. He’s swinging much deeper in the zone, and is way, way behind on fastballs. For batters with an extreme pull-side uppercut, even a slight timing slump can turn homers into whiffs and weak fly outs. Some have attributed all this to his tumultuous attendance at the World Baseball Classic, but that seems unlikely, given many of his WBC teammates and opponents are having tremendous seasons. I think this is just how it goes sometimes for players relying on the three true outcomes.

In Raleigh’s absence, Mitch Garver will get the bulk of the playing time behind the dish. He signed with Seattle back in 2024 to be the starting DH, and eventually became the backup catcher when he hit his way out of a full-time job. The Mariners brought him back this offseason — at the behest of Raleigh, in fact — and he has a 95 wRC+ in 65 plate appearances. Jhonny Pereda will back up Garver.

As Raleigh has slumped, so too have the Mariners. I wrote in March that the Mariners, on the back of Raleigh and Rodríguez, had the best odds in the American League to advance to the World Series. They weren’t quite the best team in the league by projected WAR, but on paper, they were a good, well-rounded group and cushioned by a weak division.

The Mariners are now 22-23 and struggling to find their footing without their top slugger. Still, they’re just a game behind the Athletics for first place in the AL West, and because nobody seems interested in capitalizing on Seattle’s slow start, as John Trupin recently pointed out for Lookout Landing, the team’s odds to win the division haven’t changed:

It’s worth noting the Mariners have played a bit better than their record suggests. And in general, more has gone right than wrong so far. Randy Arozarena is in the middle of a trademark heater, with a 146 wRC+ (propped up by a .388 BABIP) and 1.6 WAR through the first 45 games. Brendan Donovan has a 152 wRC+ since being acquired via trade this offseason, though he missed nearly three weeks with a groin injury. Crawford has a 119 wRC+ despite underperforming his peripherals (though the less said about his defensive metrics the better). Rodríguez’s 117 wRC+ has dispelled the (generally false) notion of his first-half struggles, especially if a summer surge is in his future. And Luke Raley’s all-or-nothing approach is set to “all” at the moment; he’s clubbed 10 home runs already (including four since I wrote about him last week). The Mariners’ platoon-backed lineup has struggled on the short side (and on defense), but overall they have the majors sixth-best wRC+ (107) and ninth-most WAR (5.8).

The pitching has generally been good, too. The rotation has thrown the most innings in the majors and sits a respectable eighth in WAR. Much of that is thanks to Emerson Hancock, whose nascent success stems from a fundamental shift in ability, as Michael Rosen detailed last month. Bryan Woo, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert have each been healthy and good, even if their annual tinkering has yet to get them to that elusive next level. And Bryce Miller, whom I often consider the most talented of the bunch, returned from the injured list (again) Wednesday with his best-ever velocity.

The bullpen has also showcased more depth than before. At the moment, Seattle is without Gabe Speier (shoulder inflammation), Matt Brash (minor lat soreness), and Jose A. Ferrer (paternity leave). And I wrote for Lookout Landing last week about the pros and cons of Andrés Muñoz’s new fastball shape. But the so-called “pile” options this year have been more reliable, and they’re not being asked to do as much.

And so the Mariners are ultimately what we thought they would be: Well rounded, imperfect, and probably the best team in the AL West. Most good teams spend large chunks of the year tip-toeing around .500, and there’s nothing here that looks out of the ordinary for a team aiming for 85-90 wins. I suspect their best days lie ahead.

But those days will be harder to reach now without Raleigh. The IL trip is certainly a disappointment following his brilliant 2025 campaign, in which he clubbed 60 homers, won the Home Run Derby, led the Mariners deep into the postseason, and forced us all to consider and reconsider and re-reconsider the true value of catching. It often seemed over the last year that he was invincible, or at least inexhaustible, ascending to levels of performance and celebrity that should be impossible for the self-effacing Raleigh. Now, for the first time in his career, he will have a chance to pause, to rest, to sit on that big dumper and think about what’s next.