Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez homer as Mariners surge to win over 
MINNEAPOLIS — No one knows how to pitch to Cal Raleigh these days. At least, nothing anyone is throwing at the Mariners catcher is working.
MINNEAPOLIS — No one knows how to pitch to Cal Raleigh these days. At least, nothing anyone is throwing at the Mariners catcher is working.Mariners pitcher Bryan Woo knows exactly what he would do, though.
“I’d put up four fingers and that’s it. I’m not pitching to him,” Woo said after Raleigh homered for the fourth straight game to extend him major-league lead and power the Mariners to an 11-2 pummeling of the Minnesota Twins on Monday.
Woo, though, doesn’t know exactly what to say anymore when it comes to explaining the ongoing onslaught from his battery mate.
“It’s like — I don’t know,” Woo said, pausing to scratch his head. “You almost, like, expect it [a homer] at this point. You don’t [actually] expect it, but it’s cool.”
Raleigh has 32 home runs and the season hasn’t even reached it midpoint yet. He’s on pace for 67 homers. He’s embarking on a historic season — for a catcher, certainly, but he’s entering rare air for any slugger.Only three players have hit 60 home runs in the American League — Babe Ruth in 1927, Roger Maris in 1961 and Aaron Judge in 2022 — and Raleigh has more homers than any of them at this stage of the season.
“It’s unbelievable what we’re watching,” teammate Julio Rodriguez said. “I feel like that’s something that we have never seen before.”
Rodriguez snapped a streak of 103 at-bats without a homer with a two-run blast in the third inning, his first since May 27, to give the Mariners a 3-0 lead.Luke Raley added a three-run blast way out to left-center later in the inning off Minnesota’s Bailey Ober, and Dominic Canzone hit his third homer in two days to make it 7-0 in the sixth inning.
The Mariners have 14 homers in their first four games of this 10-game road trip — with 41 runs on 57 hits — and Raleigh’s ninth-inning homer put the exclamation point on their second consecutive rout.
As Raleigh rounded the bases at Target Field, Mariners fans sitting behind the visitors’ dugout serenaded him with an “MVP!” chant.That is a sentiment Rodriguez supports.
“What he’s doing as a catcher is pretty special, and the way that he can impact the game — truly both on both sides of the game, I just don’t think there’s anybody doing that right now,” Rodriguez said. “I think he definitely deserves his first shot at the MVP.”
Hitting in the No. 2 spot in front of Raleigh, Rodriguez said his objective at the plate these days is to get on base any way he can. He did that in the ninth inning with a two-out, two-run double into the left-center gap, allowing Raleigh to step to the plate one more time against Twins lefty reliever Joey Wentz.
Raleigh didn’t miss a 2-1 changeup Wentz left up in the zone.
Rodriguez, standing on second base, might have had the best vantage point of anyone.
“Coming from a catcher too — what he’s doing is so special,” Rodriguez said. “I’m very happy for him. It feels really good to see him succeed, just what he’s doing with it in the game of baseball. I just think it’s so cool, man.”
Raleigh, named the AL player of the week earlier Monday, has six homers in his last six games, and he needs two more homers to match Ken Griffey Jr. for the most home runs in franchise history before the All-Star Game. Griffey hit 35 first-half homers in 1998.The Mariners still have 19 more games before the All-Star break.
“He’s just in a really good spot,” manager Dan Wilson said. “And I think he feels comfortable, clearly. He’s getting good pitches and when he gets him he doesn’t miss him.”
The Mariners (40-37) won for the third time in four games on this 10-game trip and pulled within 4.5 games on the idle Astros atop the AL West.
The M’s are 33-11 when they score at least four runs.In three games at Wrigley Field over the weekend, the M’s launched 10 homers in scorching-hot conditions in Chicago.
First pitch in Minneapolis on Monday night was, by comparison, a refreshing 80 degrees. The Mariners’ bats didn’t cool off nearly as much.
The home-run barrage overshadowed another strong outing from Woo, who has throw at least six innings in all 15 of his starts, the only MLB pitcher to do so this season.Woo worked out of trouble in the second inning and cruised through five, matching his career high with nine strikeouts. He allowed back-to-back home runs to Trevor Larnach and Carlos Correa in the sixth inning for the Twins’ only runs.
The Twins (37-41) have lost 10 of 11 and five in a row at home — allowing nine runs or more in all five of those losses.
For all the offensive firepower, and for as well as Woo pitched again, in the end the story circled back to a certain catcher once again.
No, Woo said, he’s never witnessed anything like what Raleigh is doing at any level of baseball.
“I don’t know if I ever will (again),” Woo said. “We’re just enjoying the ride right now.”
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