Mariners’ Cal Raleigh finishes 2nd in razor-tight AL MVP voting

In most years, Cal Raleigh would have been a runaway winner for the American League Most Valuable Player award.

After all, the Seattle Mariners slugger is coming off arguably the greatest season by a catcher in major league history.

But unfortunately for Raleigh, he was the odd man out in a razor-tight MVP race that featured two players with historic seasons.

New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge was announced as the 2025 AL MVP by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Thursday evening after receiving 17 of the 30 first-place votes for a total of 355 points. Raleigh was the runner-up, receiving the other 13 first-place votes for a total of 335 points.

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Mariners outfielder Julio Rodríguez finished sixth in the voting with 136 points. It was the third top-seven MVP finish in Rodríguez’s four seasons.

MVP ballots were submitted prior to the postseason, with the 30 AL voters consisting of two BBWAA writers from each AL city. Players receive 14 points for a first-place vote, nine for a second-place vote, eight for a third-place vote, and so on, down to one point for a 10th-place vote.

Judge led the majors with a .331 batting average and finished fourth with 53 home runs, which were the most ever by a batting champion. The 33-year-old Yankees outfielder also led the majors in on-base percentage (.457), slugging percentage (.688) and OPS (1.145). Since the expansion era began in 1961, he’s just the fifth player to lead the majors in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, according to MLB.com.

It was the third career MVP award for Judge, who also won in 2022 and 2024.

Raleigh, meanwhile, rewrote the record books this summer while becoming just the seventh player in MLB history to reach 60 home runs in a season. The only other players to reach the 60-homer mark are Babe Ruth (1927), Roger Maris (1961), Sammy Sosa (1998, 1999, 2001), Mark McGwire (1998, 1999), Barry Bonds (2001) and Judge (2022).

Raleigh broke the Mariners’ single-season home run record, surpassing Ken Griffey Jr.’s mark of 56 in 1997 and 1998. He broke the MLB single-season record for most homers by a switch-hitter, surpassing Mickey Mantle’s 54 in 1961. He shattered the MLB single-season record for most homers by a catcher, surpassing Salvador Perez’s 48 in 2021. And he finished just two homers shy of the AL record, which Judge set with 62 in 2022.

Known by the nickname “Big Dumper,” Raleigh posted a slash line of .247/.359/.589 with an AL-leading 125 RBIs and a .948 OPS. He finished second in the AL in slugging percentage, third in OPS and seventh in on-base percentage.

And he did it all while catching 121 games and logging 1,072 innings behind the plate, the latter of which was third-most in the majors. The 2024 AL Platinum Glove Award winner wasn’t charged with a passed ball all season and was in the 93rd percentile of catchers in pitch framing, according to Baseball Savant.

Raleigh’s record-setting campaign helped lead the Mariners to their first AL West title since 2001 and their first AL Championship Series appearance since 2001.

Griffey (1997) and Ichiro Suzuki (2001) remain the only two Mariners to win the AL MVP.

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