If Cal Raleigh Does It, When Will It Be?

Cal Raleigh is hot. Thumping three homers in a span of two days has put Big Dumper at 56 on the season with 11 games left to play. That binge gives him a realistic shot at hitting a nice round 60 on the season, a threshold that only an elite few sluggers have ever reached. He’s doing it as a catcher, which is absurd. He left the old single-season home run record for catchers in the dust a long time ago.

As I learned all the way back in first grade, 62 is only two more than 60. Given Raleigh’s predilection for blasting bombs in bunches – he hit six in six games earlier this year, and nine in a separate 11-game stretch – Aaron Judge’s single-season AL home run record (and for some people, though not me, the “true” home run record) is definitely in play.

As is tradition at FanGraphs, when someone goes for a home run milestone, we forecast when it might happen. Whether it’s Judge’s quest for 62, Albert Pujols’ push for 700, or Shohei Ohtani’s bid for 50/50, it’s fun and useful to predict when the actual milestone game will occur. I’ll start with the methodology, but if you’re not into that, there are some tables down below that will give you an idea of when and where Raleigh might hit either his 60th, 62nd, or 63rd homer.

I started with our Depth Charts projection for Raleigh’s home run rate the rest of the way. That’s based on neutral opposition, so I also accounted for park factors and opposition. Since Raleigh is a switch-hitter, I used the specific pitchers the Mariners are expected to face to determine whether he starts each game batting lefty or righty, and also used those pitchers’ home run rate projections to determine opponent strength. I used a blend of projected starter, home run rate, and observed bullpen home run rate to come up with a strength of opposition estimate. That let me create a unique home run environment for each game. I also told the computer to randomly select how many plate appearances Raleigh receives each game, with an average of five most likely but some chance of four or six.

The Mariners might give Raleigh a day off, but it’s far from certain. He hasn’t had an off day in the last month, for example. I modeled a 5% chance of a rest day on each game of the two series that surround their regularly scheduled day off, but capped it at a single rest day; after he rests once, the program assumes he’ll play every single day the rest of the way. I also included a factor that makes Raleigh’s home run rate fluctuate around his projections, which means that in some simulations he hits home runs in 9% of his plate appearances, while in others he hits them 5% of the time. I simulated the remainder of the season a million times to get the likelihood of his 60th homer happening in a given game:

That top-line number isn’t particularly surprising; we’re projecting him for 59 home runs right now, so I’d be shocked if his odds of reaching 60 were above 50%, but it’s definitely close either way. The home series against the Rockies, and the last game against the Astros (he faces Hunter Brown and Framber Valdez in the first two of that set), are his best opportunities for homers. T-Mobile Park suppresses offense, but it’s not particularly tough for lefty home runs, and the Rockies are scheduled to start three replacement-level righties in that series. The last series of the year against the Dodgers is another fruitful time to see no. 60; it’s not that those games are particularly easy, but the Los Angeles bullpen is a disaster right now and this is an accumulation game; in plenty of these simulations, Raleigh does most of his damage against the Rockies and then hits the capping 60th homer in the last series.

Adding the individual games up, the Rockies series is the best one to attend if you can only go to one and want to see the 60th home run. The Dodgers series is a close second, though, and it’s better for the next statistic I’m going to show you, the odds of Raleigh hitting his 62nd homer in a given game:

Hey, 13.5% isn’t half bad. If you’re trying to see this particular milestone, though, you’ll need to go to Seattle, and probably for the last series of the season. Even then, six homers in 11 games is a steep enough hill to climb that when he does it in the simulation, it’s most frequently in the very last game. These odds are particularly volatile right now, though; if Raleigh hits another home run or two before the weekend, the path to 62 opens up far more. If he doesn’t, it’s almost impossible. If I tell the model that Raleigh will hit two homers in the next four games, it gives him a 25% chance of reaching 62. If I instead give him none in those four games, the odds fall to 4%. In other words, he won’t reach the milestone in the next few days, but they still matter tremendously.

Finally, for the sake of completeness, what about the odds of Raleigh getting to 63 and setting the new AL record? It’s going to be tough:

The TLDR of all of this: If you want to see Big Dumper hit a historic home run, you’ll need to be in Seattle. Depending on whether you’re into round numbers or Marisiana, you might prefer the Rockies series or Dodgers series. If I could only go to one game, though, I’d pick September 26 against the Dodgers. It has a nice spread of likelihoods for each milestone. There’s also some chance that the Mariners could clinch the AL West that day, and Clayton Kershaw is scheduled to pitch for the Dodgers. That’s a lot of cool things all lined up at once — and maybe, just maybe, one of those cool things will be a home run that you’ll be able to tell your friends you saw in person for the rest of your life.