The catching position might be the most grueling of any spot on a baseball diamond. The day-to-day grind of handling a pitching staff, taking foul tips off the mask, blocking balls in the dirt and still producing at the plate wears down even the toughest players. The Mariners' Cal Raleigh knows that as well as anyone.
Since the start of 2023, no one has caught more innings than Raleigh, who has appeared in every game for Seattle this season. "It's not for the weak," he told MLB.com about being a full-time catcher.
Considering the rigors of his position, Raleigh's 2025 performance looks even more remarkable.
The Mariners' backstop was slashing .258/.370/.596 with an outrageous 19 home runs over 54 games entering Thursday's game against the Nationals. Factoring in his typically strong defense, the man they call “Big Dumper” has been worth 3.2 Wins Above Replacement according to FanGraphs, which trails only Aaron Judge (4.7).
But this isn’t just the start of a potential All-Star campaign -- Raleigh is on pace for one of the greatest seasons a catcher has ever had. Here’s how he’d stack up historically if he keeps this up.
All stats below are through Wednesday.
Historic power
Raleigh's multihomer game on Tuesday gave him 19 dingers on the year, which bested Roy Campanella's previous record (set in 1955) for the most by a primary catcher through a team's first 53 games in a season.
Having appeared in every game, Raleigh is on a 162-game pace for 57 home runs. That would make him the first primary catcher to homer 50 times in the season. Salvador Perez came close with 48 home runs in 2021, but Raleigh could become the first catcher to clear that hurdle.
There aren’t even that many 40-home run seasons by a catcher in MLB history. There have been only eight of them by six players: Campanella in 1953, Johnny Bench in '70 and '72, Todd Hundley in '96, Mike Piazza in '97 and '99, Javy Lopez in 2003 and Perez in '21. That’s it.
Even if Raleigh’s pace slows a bit, there’s still a strong chance he can reach the 40-homer mark. After all, he’s already banked 19 home runs, and bashing 21 more the rest of the way doesn’t seem out of the question.
Even more impressive is the fact that Raleigh is doing this primarily as a catcher. Eighteen of Raleigh’s 19 home runs have come while he was in the lineup as Seattle's catcher, with his other home run coming as a designated hitter.
Again, Raleigh is on a historic trajectory if we look at the most home runs as a catcher. Whereas Perez hit 15 of his 48 home runs as a designated hitter in 2021, Raleigh is getting most of his damage done on days he’s putting on the catcher’s gear. Lopez’s 42 home runs as a catcher in 2003 are the high-water mark, while Piazza (twice), Campanella and Hundley are the only others to hit 40 home runs as a catcher.
A big part of Raleigh’s power outburst is tied to the slugger using pull power even more. He was already one of the most extreme pull-power hitters in the Majors, but Raleigh has taken it to another level in 2025.
Raleigh from 2022-24 vs. '25
Barrel rate: 14.4% vs. 23.5%
Pulled airball rate: 29.8% vs. 38.2%
What’s remarkable about these changes is that no primary catcher barreled more baseballs from 2022-24 than Raleigh (142), and he’s still managed to boost his barrel rate by this much. Only Oneil Cruz (25.0%) is barreling a higher percentage of batted balls among qualifying players.
And his pulled-airball rate (fly balls, line drives and popups) was already the third-highest among qualifying hitters the previous three years. This season, nobody is pulling more balls in the air than Raleigh.
Overall offensive production
Raleigh hasn’t simply been an all-or-nothing slugger, either.
The Mariners catcher is drawing walks at a career-best 14.5% rate in 2025, and his .370 on-base percentage is a top 30 figure among qualifying hitters. Raleigh’s 179 wRC+ -- a rate statistic that measures a hitter's overall offensive value in terms of run creation while adjusting for league and park effects (a 100 wRC+ is considered league average) -- ranks fifth in the Majors behind Judge (239), Freddie Freeman (185), Ryan O'Hearn (184) and Shohei Ohtani (181).
Once again, Raleigh’s all-around offensive production puts him in a rare spot for a catcher. Only six primary catching seasons in the Modern Era (since 1900) have included at least 500 plate appearances and a wRC+ of 160 or better.
There's been nothing fluky about his production so far this season, either. Raleigh’s .398 expected wOBA -- which looks at a player’s quality and quantity of contact -- isn’t much lower than his actual .410 wOBA. That .398 xwOBA ranks in the 93rd percentile and has him sandwiched between hitters like James Wood, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Corbin Carroll, Bryce Harper and Jackson Merrill.
Like his power improvement, Raleigh has made strides in terms of his approach at the plate, with the most notable change being his 4.9-point decrease in chase rate. Raleigh had never rated higher than the 34th percentile in chase rate before this season. Now, he’s running a 26.9% chase rate that ranks in the 53rd percentile.
Improving both your power production and plate discipline simultaneously is a tough trick to pull off. Doing so has allowed Raleigh to tap into this elite level of production.
Better yet, the switch-hitting backstop is mashing from both sides of the plate, and Raleigh is handling most pitch types with success.
Raleigh’s 2025 splits
LHB (162 PA): .399 xwOBA // 171 wRC+ // 11 HR
RHB (73 PA): .398 xwOBA // 190 wRC+ // 8 HR
Fastballs (129 PA): .422 xwOBA // 11 HR
Breaking balls (59 PA): .348 xwOBA // 5 HR
Offspeed pitches (45 PA): .396 xwOBA // 3 HR
Raleigh has proven to be something of a matchup nightmare for opposing pitchers. Having a minimum .348 xwOBA against both righties and lefties and all three pitch-type categories means there’s been no real weak link for Raleigh thus far.
If there's one area Raleigh hasn't excelled in, it's been on his days as a designated hitter, where he has a 14 wRC+ in 49 plate appearances, compared to a 219 mark in his time as a catcher. Still, Mariners manager Dan Wilson -- a former big league catcher himself -- thinks Raleigh has taken the adjustment as a DH well.
"He still stays very involved on the bench. And coming from behind the plate, that's just how you're wired," Wilson said. "I think it's staying locked in, being in a position that is so involved, mentally, and then being a DH can be a little bit of a switch. But Cal seems to make the adjustment very well."
All-around value
Raleigh's performance this season hasn't come out of nowhere. He established himself as one of the best catchers in the game over the previous three years, leading his position with 91 home runs while also ranking as the second-most valuable defensive catcher. His 13.9 WAR tied him with Adley Rutschman for first among backstops in that span.
What Raleigh has done this year, though, has possibly separated him from the pack as the clear-cut top catcher in the sport. With 3.2 WAR in 54 games, Raleigh is on pace for a 9.6 WAR season, which would be one of the best catching seasons by WAR all time. Only three catchers in MLB history have produced at least 9 WAR in a single season: Buster Posey in 2012 (9.8), Bench in 1972 (9.2) and Piazza in 1997 (9.1).
Heck, there have only been eight catching seasons in that time with at least 8 WAR and 23 seasons with 7 or more WAR.
Of course, this list could have been longer if all-time great Negro League catchers like Josh Gibson (44.5 WAR in 598 documented games) and Biz Mackey (28.1 WAR in 894 documented games) had been given their shot to play in AL/NL games.
With that not being the case, however, we have few examples of historically great catching seasons that Raleigh is on pace for.
Mariners right-hander Bryan Woo, who has pitched to Raleigh in 37 of the hurler's 50 career appearances, sees his batterymate as the total package behind the plate.
"It’s just everything altogether. It’s the bat. It’s the leadership. It’s the humility. It’s what he means to the guys in the clubhouse. It’s what he means to the fans in Seattle," Woo said.
Can he keep it up?
Is Raleigh performing over his skis a bit? Probably. FanGraphs’ OOPSY projections -- which include barrel rate and bat speed -- have Raleigh putting up a 134 wRC+, 22 home runs and 4 WAR the rest of the season. That’s obviously a step below where Raleigh has performed so far this season, but also an excellent new baseline that’s an improvement on where he was before this season.
Some regression is to be expected -- and possibly a day off here and there -- but Raleigh has already banked so much production that even a return to his career norm the rest of the way would lead to an all-time season. And given Raleigh’s unique durability for a catcher in today’s environment -- he played in 145 games in 2023 and 153 games last season -- there’s no reason not to bank on 150-plus games from him.
Having logged that kind of workload behind the dish, Raleigh understands what it takes to avoid wearing down over the course of the season.
"The biggest thing is like, yes you want to recover, but you've got to stay in shape," Raleigh said. "You've got to stay on top of it. You've got to continue to build on it, because if you don't use it, you lose it. I think that’s what I see with a lot of guys is that their bodies start breaking down. Obviously, that’s going to happen because Father Time is undefeated, but you also have to keep that strength. You’ve got to keep that mobility. That’s kind of the key to me.”
We’re roughly a third of the way into the 2025 season, and Raleigh has entered the conversation for the top players in baseball. It’s going to be hard to usurp Judge for the AL MVP Award this season, but Raleigh has the chance to earn his first All-Star selection and possibly become the first catcher to finish top three in MVP voting since Yadier Molina in 2013.
Even better, he might be crafting one of the greatest seasons a catcher has ever had.
MLB.com's Mariners beat reporter Daniel Kramer contributed to the reporting of this story.