Mariners coach details how WBC led to Cal Raleigh’s injury

It turns out that the right oblique injury that landed Seattle Mariners slugger Cal Raleigh on the injured list for a month starting in mid-May is something he’d been dealing with since the start of the season.

And the World Baseball Classic is a big reason why.

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It’s been speculated upon for months now that participating in the WBC helped lead to Raleigh’s slow start to the 2026 campaign. Longtime MLB insider Tim Kurkjian recently told Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy that a team source said the WBC “killed him.”

Well, Mariners bench coach and longtime member of the coaching staff Manny Acta has now highlighted the WBC’s negative impact on Raleigh and added that it also played a role in the oblique injury.

“I’m a big fan of the Baseball Classic. Obviously I was a part of it,” Acta said during an interview with MLB Network’s MLB Now. “Big, big fan and I’m not an excuse maker, but I don’t think the Baseball Classic helped Cal Raleigh at all.”

Acta pointed to the fact that Raleigh had only nine at-bats during his two weeks competing in the WBC, which took place during the middle of spring training. He said that led to switch-hitting catcher overworking himself upon returning to spring training in an attempt to make up for the reps he missed out on.

“You can get nine at-bats in four days just hanging out in spring training, and I think (not having) that really hurt him,” Acta said. “Then he came back and probably tried to do way too much the last week of spring training, trying to accumulate the at-bats and the playing time that he missed during the Classic, and that kind of hurt his oblique.

“He’s such a team-first guy that he kind of played through pain and that wasn’t helping him at all. He paid the price, but he earned our respect – not that he didn’t have it. But Cal is such a team-first guy that he didn’t think about himself and was just thinking about the ballclub.”

About three weeks removed from his return from the IL, Raleigh, who is batting .170 with a .585 OPS and nine homers over 61 games this year, has recently started to show some signs of turning things around at the plate. He has hits in four straight games, matching his longest streak this season, and collected two doubles on Tuesday night in what was his first multi-hit game since coming off the IL June 16.

“I think he’s healthy now, he’s getting into a groove and he’s going to take off in the second half,” Acta said.

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