SEATTLE -- Cal Raleigh cannot be stopped.
One day after he hit two massive homers to move atop the all-time leaderboard for the most in history in a single season by a primary catcher, the Mariners backstop one-upped himself with his 50th of the season in the first inning of Seattle’s 9-6 win over the Padres.
Raleigh won an eight-pitch battle with lefty JP Sears by working into a full count then yanking a 92.9 mph, low-and-in fastball and crushing it 419 feet into the second deck at T-Mobile Park.
Raleigh is now four homers shy of tying the record for most by a switch-hitter (Mickey Mantle in 1961) and six shy of tying Seattle’s franchise record (Ken Griffey Jr. in 1997 and 1998). And he joined Griffey as the only players in team history to reach 50.
The 50-homer threshold had been reached exactly 50 times in MLB history before Raleigh went yard on Monday, by 33 players. Raleigh is the first to reach that mark in 2025, extending the MLB lead that he’s held for most of the season, now with five more than Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Schwarber in second place.
Raleigh is now on pace for 61 this season, which would be one shy of the American League record set by Aaron Judge in 2022. Judge is the only player to clear 60 since 2001, when Sammy Sosa clubbed 66 and Barry Bonds set the all-time record with 73. Overall, only nine times (by six players) has the 60-homer threshold been cleared in a single season.
One distinction from Monday’s long ball was that he was in the lineup at designated hitter, marking his 10th homer from that position to go with his 40 when playing catcher. The overall record for most homers in a single season by a primary catcher while playing catcher is 42, set by Atlanta’s Javy Lopez in 2003.