Right or left, home or away, day or night, the circumstances haven’t mattered much to Cal Raleigh during his magical summer.
He’s proven his power plays from anywhere at anytime.
As the Mariners catcher has embarked on his historic home run barrage, Raleigh has chased down one of the longest-standing Major League Baseball records, and in the process pulled even with one of the sport’s most revered figures.
Raleigh belted his 54th home run Sunday at T-Mobile Park to tie New York Yankees Hall of Fame slugger Mickey Mantle for the most home runs in MLB history by a switch-hitter.
Mantle, the most accomplished switch-hitter of all-time, set the record of 54 homers during the iconic 1961 season, when his Yankees teammate Roger Maris hit 61 homers to break Babe Ruth’s season record.
Mantle’s 536 home runs is the career record for a switch-hitter.
Raleigh, a first-time All-Star this season, already broke the all-time record for home runs in a season by a catcher when he hit his 49th on Aug. 24 at T-Mobile Park.
The son of a college baseball coach, Raleigh grew up switch-hitting from a young age — it’s all he’s ever known. And this season, he became the first switch-hitter in MLB history to hit at least 20 homers from both the right and the left sides.
Raleigh came into Monday’s series against the St. Louis Cardinals with 33 home runs in 438 plate appearances as a left-handed hitter and 20 homers in 181 plate appearances hitting right-handed.
Raleigh continues to lead the majors in home runs, as he’s done virtually the entire season, and he came into the week leading the American League in runs batted in with 113.
Also notable, Raleigh has nudged closer to another Hall of Fame slugger who stands as the most accomplished player in Mariners history.
That’s a distinction Ken Griffey Jr. might soon have to share with Raleigh.
Griffey, the Seattle icon, holds the Mariners franchise record with 56 home runs in a season, something he did in 1997 and ’98. Raleigh has 12 more games after Sunday to chase that record.
What makes Raleigh’s achievements particularly rare is he’s spent the vast majority of his time at catcher, baseball’s most demanding position.
Because of that, he has vaulted into the American League Most Valuable Player debate, alongside Yankees star Aaron Judge, who has won the award twice.
Judge had 43 homers and 97 RBIs through the weekend, and he leads MLB with a 7.9 Wins Above Replacement from FanGraphs, a metric that measures a player’s overall value.
Raleigh is second with a 7.5 fWAR entering Monday.
This story will be updated.