MLB 2026: Breaking down Cal Raleigh’s first 13 games

There are cold starts to the season – and then there is this start to the season by the Seattle Mariners, who are doing their best to show us what baseball could be like in Yakutsk, Russia.

Through their first 13 games, the Mariners have hit an abysmal .184, so despite a franchise-best 2.62 ERA over that span, they currently sit at the bottom of the standings with a disappointing 4-9 record. They were swept this week at Texas, scoring three total runs in three games and collecting just 11 hits, culminating in a lackluster two-hit shutout on Wednesday.

Most frustrating is that their 2-3-4-5 hitters – Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez, Josh Naylor and Randy Arozarena – are a combined 26-for-195 (.133) with just one home run. Rodriguez and Naylor are both without an extra-base hit, while Arozarena has at least three doubles. Rodriguez has a total of seven hits this season, and Naylor has only five with a wRC+ of minus-49.

It’s Raleigh, however, who faces intense scrutiny from this group, coming off its record 60-homer season, but after a rough first two weeks. He is hitting .143 with one home run on seven hits and 21 strikeouts, which is the second most in MLB.

As the Mariners host the division-rival Houston Astros in ESPN’s MLB Game of the Day at 9:40 p.m. ET on Saturday (available on the ESPN app), let’s take a look at Raleigh’s departure and see what’s going on with him — and his teammates.

Breaking down the Raleigh Bats

I watched all 55 of Raleigh’s plate appearances throughout Wednesday’s game — every single one of the 248 pitches he saw. On the enjoyment scale, this mission fell somewhere between “eating a hot dog at Kingdome back in the day that was probably cooked three days earlier” and “watching Bobby Ayala close out games in 1998.”

Here are the takeaways from a number of notable bats:

Game 1/PA n°2: Crossed out on an 0-2 changeup from Cleveland Guardians right-hander Tanner Bibee. Perfect pitch on the outside corner, diving away from Raleigh, no shame there. But the first pitch at bat was a four-seam fastball right down the middle that Raleigh took for a strike.

Game 1/PA n°4: Trailing 5-4 in the eighth inning, Raleigh took a 2-0 lead but tipped on a slider from Erik Sabrowski, ultimately striking out while looking at a 2-2 slider that was on the outside (and that Raleigh should have challenged).

Game 2/PA n°1: Raleigh struck out in an eight-pitch at-bat against Gavin Williams, fouling a 3-2 cutter that was up the middle without much movement, then whiffing on a nasty 3-2 cutter that came in off home plate.

Game 2/PA n°4: Struck out to Peyton Pallette for his fourth strikeout of the game and his seventh in two games. It was a curveball, well outside, a pitch that Raleigh, again, should have challenged.

We’ll note here that Raleigh – like Rodriguez, Naylor and Arozarena – participated in the World Baseball Classic this year. Of course, there was a lot of talk about Raleigh not shaking hands with Arozarena (and then Naylor in another match). However, after Arozarena apologized for comments he made about the interaction during a postgame interview, everyone seemed to approach the regular season on good terms. With so many of their key players scattered across WBC teams, the Mariners had a terrible spring training at 11-19. When Raleigh played, he struggled, going 8 for 32 with a home run and 12 strikeouts, then went 0 for 9 in the WBC, ending up on the bench for Will Smith for Team USA’s final two games. Yes, given all of that, you can imagine that local Seattle sports radio spends about two hours a day talking about the WBC.

Game 5/PA n°1: Coming off the bench to pinch hit in a 1-1 game with two runners against the New York Yankees, Raleigh took a 2-0 lead against left-handed reliever Brent Headrick, but then swung and missed a slider out of the strike zone, eventually getting out on a good 2-2 catch and out.

Game 6/PA n°4: After going 0 for 3 against southpaw Max Fried, Raleigh faced Headrick again. The first pitch is a 93 mph fastball up the middle that he goes through. He ends up hitting while swinging on the exact same pitch.

One of the keys to Raleigh’s monster season in 2025 has been his improvement against left-handed pitchers. He’s hitting .281/.351/.681 with 22 homers in 185 at-bats against lefties, after hitting just .183 against them in 2024. Those two fastballs from Headrick were the type of middle-of-the-zone pitches that Raleigh demolished last year — on both sides of the plate.

Look at his numbers against pitches in the vertical middle of the strike zone, i.e. around the belt:

2025: .290/.333/.695, 26 HR in 210 at-bats
2026: .105/.261/263, 1 HR in 19 at-bats

This is obviously a very small sample size, but he hasn’t missed those pitches in 2025. His contact rate on them was 80.7% last year and is only 67.6% so far in 2026. His contact against pitches anywhere in the strike zone has decreased from 78.4% to 65.8%. Even in 2024, this contact rate in the area was 77.0%.

Raleigh is somewhat similar to Bryce Harper in his swing decisions. Even though both walk a lot, both also swing and miss a lot and chase out of the strike zone. Last year, Raleigh drew 97 walks even though his chase rate was below average, in the 25th percentile. But when the pitcher made a mistake, Raleigh often crushed him. This contact rate in the area is the big concern. Out of 187 qualified hitters so far, only Jose Caballero has a worse contact rate in the zone than Raleigh (and Rodriguez is 181st).

Game 8/AP n°3: Raleigh flies out to left field against Los Angeles Angels left-hander Reid Detmers on a 2-2 fastball up and down, a perfectly located four-seamer. Here’s the amazing thing: With an exit velocity of 100.7 mph, it was the first hard-hit ball (a ball over 95 mph) of the season for Raleigh…in his 28th at-bat.

Game 9/PA n°1: Facing Angels starter Jack Kochanowicz, Raleigh hit a ball against the wall in right field at Angel Stadium…and Jo Adell robbed him of a home run (one of three he would steal in the game).

Last year, maybe that ball traveled an extra three feet. If this game takes place in June, it’s probably a home run. Indeed, it didn’t help that the Mariners played their first seven games in Seattle — and Seattle in April is probably the hardest place to get to in the majors. They played two evening games in Anaheim, another hard-to-reach location. They played three games in Texas, where Globe Life Field played the role of the majors’ best pitcher’s park last year.

Game 9/PA n°3: Facing Kochanowicz for the third time, Raleigh fell behind on a questionable strike on the first pitch, then fouled on four pitches, including two four-seams (one up, one down and inside). He ultimately hits on a 96 mph 3-2 four-seam route up and out of the zone, a pitch with a 0% strike probability and the kind of pitch that a hitter in a deep slump comes up with.

Game 11/PA n°1: Texas right-hander Jacob deGrom tries to sneak a 3-2 fastball past Raleigh in the first inning, but the pitch is in the center of the strike zone and Raleigh crushes him to right field for his first home run. Raleigh has seven hits in 2026: that’s the only one classified as a hard-hit ball.

Game 12/PA n°2: Raleigh swings at a first-pitch cutter from Nathan Eovaldi, a left-out throw over home plate, but Raleigh is late and pops up in shallow left field. He would also swing at Eovaldi’s first pitch in his next at-bat, hitting a foul ball before finally hitting a bloop single.

Jumping on the first pitch was something that worked last year for Raleigh. He hit .427 with 17 homers in 82 at-bats when throwing the first pitch into play. He was also one of the most aggressive first-pitch swingers, with the 13th-highest first-pitch swing percentage among qualified hitters. (In another similarity, Harper had the second highest percentage.)

This year? Raleigh is just 1 for 7 when fielding the first pitch.

Game 13/PA n°4: Raleigh flies away on a 3-2 cutter from Cole Winn, perfectly placed in the high outside corner. The good sign for Raleigh: That ball was hit 92 mph and he had two other outs earlier in the game that were hit hard. Maybe it’s starting to connect.

What this start to the season means for the Mariners

It’s remarkable to see a team’s best hitters struggle like this at the same time. And to be clear: this is not a case of bad luck on balls in play or anything like that. They were bad. Watching Raleigh’s 55 plate appearances was like watching an overmatched kid who had just been called up from Single-A. Raleigh’s swing-and-miss rate against four- and two-seamers increased from 25.2 percent last season to 50 percent. If you can’t hit a fastball, you don’t have a chance at the plate. Rodriguez also lacked fastballs, with a miss rate of 32.8% compared to 21.6% last year.

And when did they make contact? The contact was not hard. Check out these hard-hit rate numbers through Seattle’s first 13 games compared to last season:

Mariners in 2025: 42.8% (4th in MLB)
Mariners in 2026: 34.2% (29th in MLB)

Raleigh in 2025: 49.6%
Raleigh in 2026: 21.4%

Rodriguez in 2025: 48.0%
Rodriguez in 2026: 36.4%

Naylor in 2025: 41.9%
Naylor in 2026: 35.0%

Arozarena in 2025: 50.6%
Arozarena in 2026: 44.1%

Even while hitting 60 homers last year, Raleigh was a steady hitter — and even started slowly, hitting .184 with two homers in his first 13 games. He had other streaks of one home run in 11 games, one in 10 games and three different streaks of one in nine games. When he hit homers, they came in bunches, including an incredible 11 two-homer games.

Rodriguez, meanwhile, has been a notoriously slow starter throughout his career, with a first-half OPS of .726 and a second-half OPS of .902. His career OPS in August is 300 points higher than in April.

None of this makes this bad start any better, but perhaps it proves that it’s too early to panic. Then again, for a franchise that missed the playoffs by one win in 2023 and 2024, this slow start could prove costly come September.