Why Cal Raleigh going on IL is good for him and the Mariners

For at least 10 days, the Seattle Mariners will be without superstar catcher Cal Raleigh.

And considering how things have gone so far for him in 2026, maybe that’s a good thing.

Mariners star Cal Raleigh goes on IL for first time in career

Now, it’s not a good thing that Raleigh has a right oblique strain that is serious enough to land him on the injured list for the first time in big league career. But from the jump this year, Raleigh has not looked like himself, and certainly not like the 2025 version of Big Dumper that set records with 60 home runs and led the Mariners to their first division title and ALCS appearance in nearly a quarter-century.

Raleigh was hitless playing for the United States in the World Baseball Classic in March. Then he scuffled through the first month of the regular season, playing 27 games before his batting average got over .200 for the first time. And just as it seemed he was starting to heat up at the plate, hitting .345 with five home runs and a double in a seven-game stretch in late April, he fell into an 0-for-38 slump while dealing with the oblique injury that included a three-game period where he remained on the bench.

Seattle Sports’ Mike Salk reacted Thursday morning by relating Raleigh’s injury to an oblique issue that impacted teammate Luke Raley in 2025. Coming off a 2024 season where he hit 22 home runs, Raley hit .202 with just four homers in 73 games while dealing with a nagging core injury last year. After having an offseason to heal up, Raley is hitting .269 this season with a team-leading 10 homers and 27 RBIs in 39 games after he crushed a three-run homer in the first inning against the Astros on Thursday.

“This felt like something that really needed to happen,” Salk said of Raleigh going on the injured list. “And hopefully not just are they able to get him back this year and with a lot of time left, hopefully they’re able to get the real Cal Raleigh and that you don’t end up in a Luke Raley situation last year where he was never really himself.”

Mariners insider Shannon Drayer responded with her view of the situation.

“That was real last year with Luke Raley. I mean, it went from side to back to things that he wasn’t sure what it was, and he tried to play through it and you get more frustrated with it,” Drayer said. “It’s such a tough thing to do and rarely do you see really good results with it, and Luke certainly didn’t last year.”

A needed reset

The time off from playing could be valuable for Raleigh mentally.

“With such a rough start and such a rough WBC and such a rough spring, if nothing else, mentally, the restart on this is going to help him immensely,” Drayer said. “Now he has to focus on, my No. 1 job right now is just getting better. I’m not worried about the pitchers, I’m not worried about being the slugging hero for this team, I’m not worried about trying to look like I did last year. My season will start when I get back out there.

“And if anybody looked like they needed a restart, it was Cal Raleigh.”

The Mariners will miss Raleigh’s bat in the lineup, but there’s something helpful to knowing for sure he’s not available rather than playing through an injury.

“I think this in some ways helps in that the focus now isn’t (on) what’s going on with him. Is he going to go on the IL or are we going to have him? … There’s clarity,” Drayer said. “This is the group right now. And so you take that off of the table for good, and any kind of anxiety it may have caused because he had been struggling. What can we do as a group to score runs? And you know they can. You look up and down that lineup and you know that when they put good at-bats together, they can put runs together. We have not seen that consistently this year, and hopefully that helps with the focus right there.”

Hear the full Brock and Salk conversation with Mariners insider Shannon Drayer in the podcast at this link or in the player below. Catch Brock and Salk live from 6-10 a.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports.

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