PEORIA, Ariz. — His face was still flushed red with beads of sweat building on his forehead. The anger and frustration in his voice couldn’t be ignored. The hurt was obvious.
The date was Sept. 30, 2023, less than 30 minutes after the Seattle Mariners had officially been eliminated from the playoffs by the Texas Rangers in game No. 161 of the season.
Surrounded by local media, Cal Raleigh stood stoically, trying to offer up answers as to how and why things had gone so wrong in a season where so much was expected.
Raleigh, still clearly irritated about the team’s failures, essentially called out ownership for not doing enough to upgrade the roster, urging for a change in thinking.
“We’ve done a great job of growing some players here within the farm system,” he said. “But sometimes you’ve got to go out and you have to buy.”
Mariners fans, rightfully irritated with ownership’s thrifty ways, latched on to what was said, trumpeting criticism of the owners’ unwillingness to invest financially in the team. Within the clubhouse and in the organization, the focus was on who said it, why it was said and what it would mean moving forward.
Incapable of sugarcoating a rotten outcome, always bluntly honest and universally respected, Raleigh showed he was more than just a catcher or even a team leader that day.
He said what most felt but wouldn’t dare say publicly. His words came from a place most couldn’t speak. He labeled the season a failure when those above him wouldn’t. He blamed himself first and admitted the players’ role in falling short of the stated goals. He was adamant that something needed to change.
Did anyone else?
Everything Raleigh said that day needed to be said. It was something a team captain might say. But the Mariners haven’t bestowed that honor on a player since 1986.
Raleigh is more than a C on the jersey. He’s grown into the conscience of the organization.
“What is your why?” is something asked of players. The Mariners foundational catcher offers his why everyday for everyone to see.
If as Vincent Van Gogh said, “Conscience is a man’s compass,” maybe Raleigh can be the one to point a franchise that has lacked his fortitude to reach places it has never been for reasons most can’t understand.
Credit to the Mariners, the organization did what it takes to keep their conscience around for the long-term at a sizable cost. Two days before opening day, they agreed to a 6-year, $105 million contract extension with Raleigh.
• • •
With the 2025 season about 10 days away, Raleigh takes a brief break from his packed day. He thinks back to that day, assessing the words and emotions that came out.
“I don’t regret what I said because I’m never going to apologize for wanting to win,” he said. “I’ve talked to guys about this. The only regret I would have is if teammates took it the wrong way like I was going after them, which was never my intent. I want to win. That’s the priority.”
He met with the media the day after he made those controversial comments to issue a somewhat unnecessary apology, making a similar statement. But his teammates weren’t angry. They had his back, championing what he said, hoping his words might make an impact to those in control.
They didn’t.
The Mariners missed the postseason again in 2024, getting eliminated a few days before the final game of the season. Raleigh didn’t go for a repeat in his end-of-season remarks. There was no reason to do so. His feelings hadn’t changed.
“If you look back, you always see that I blame myself first for our failures,” he said. “I will always point the finger at myself first. I need to be better. It starts with me to set expectations and accountability. I don’t regret what I said about wanting to win: I want to win. It’s something that I want people to look at me and see that. And I want them to see that in our team as well.”
He can hold others accountable because he holds himself to the highest of standards. It’s why he’s logged more innings behind the plate than any catcher in baseball over the last three seasons.
There were plenty of times he should’ve sat. He played the last six weeks of the 2022 season with torn ligaments in the thumb of his glove hand. He played through severe neck discomfort early in 2024, missing only one game after an emergency removal of a broken tooth. He didn’t miss any time when he got his finger caught in the backstop netting in Anaheim, Calif., ripping it wide open.
“I thought he might have to go on the IL,” Luke Raley said. “Instead, he tapes it up and finishes the game. That’s who he is. He’s just a grinder.”
Don’t forget about the 100 or so foul tips over each season that hit him in the hand, wrist, thigh and groin. His body hurts most days.
“You just put all that to the side, you keep your head down and you just go until you can’t go any more, until the tires fall off,” he said. “My dad did a good job of teaching me that there’s always more in the tank.”
In baseball parlance, Cal “posts.”
It’s a blue-collar mentality that makes him relatable to fans of every background. “I want to play,” he said. “Players play. I want to play for as long as I can, and I want to do it the right way. … if you can play, you play. If I was taking days off when I could play, I don’t know if I could look back and be proud of my career. Did I really give everything I could if I took a day off here or there when my guys really needed me?”
• • •
They are two of Todd Raleigh’s favorite pictures of his firstborn son, and both speak to the player he’s become.
The first is both of them in pristine Western Carolina baseball uniforms, sitting in the dugout pregame. Todd was the head coach of the Division I baseball program, and Cal, roughly 12 or 13, was the bat boy and overseer of his dad’s work.
Todd was filling out the lineup card for that day’s game and Cal is giving a quizzical look while questioning his father’s batting order construction — a common occurrence.
“He always just said: ‘Why don’t you do this?’ ‘Why are doing that?’” Todd said. “I remember saying, ‘Dude, we won 47 games and were ranked 13th in the country.’ But it didn’t matter, he was always asking a gazillion questions. He wanted to learn. He was always a student of the game.”
It’s why Cal reached out to Austin Hedges, the catcher for the Guardians, to discuss techniques for pitch framing. In the 2023 season, Cal finished second to Hedges in framing metrics. Even still, he wanted to be better.
“Cal was one of the best, but he wanted to get better at it, and he went to the source,” manager Dan Wilson said. “He went to Hedges, and worked with him a lot in the offseason. You’re not trying to clone yourself after another guy, but you are taking what you do and you make it your own.”
The result: Raleigh led all catchers in pitch framing metrics in 2024 and was eventually named the American League Gold Glove and Platinum Glove award winner.
“You just want to be the best you can be,” he said. “I want to be good all-around. You want to be good at every single aspect. I want to be the best at my position.”
The second picture fills Todd’s voice with pride. It was taken when Cal was 12 at a tournament in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
A very young Cal, who was tall for his age with a “big dumper” in training, is consoling his pitcher, who is clearly upset at his performance.
“His name was Nick Moore,” Cal recalled.
Even back in his youth baseball days, Cal understood that a major component of catching is working with a pitcher.
“It was like the end of the world for [Moore], and Cal was trying to help him through it,” Todd said. “The kid had tears coming down his eyes, and Cal is trying to be compassionate. He took that part seriously at a young age. He was an old soul.”
Some of the current Mariners pitchers might not use compassionate to describe their in-game meetings with Raleigh. Like most catchers, his relationship with the pitchers is unique.
They can frustrate him with their constant tinkering and experimenting with pitches. They infuriate him when they shake off his signs. They needle him about being a grouchy old man. He makes fun of their attempts at fielding, their lack of athleticism and how little they have to do most days, particularly the starters.
He can be like a stepfather they didn’t ask for.
But don’t ever mess with one of his pitchers. Don’t steal their strikes. Don’t show them up. And don’t even think about stepping toward the mound. He will protect them with blind fury.
“They are his children,” pitching Pete Woodworth said.
The comment makes Raleigh smirk.
“It’s not always about how much you know, it’s about how much you care,” Cal said, repeating a line Todd used often. “They want somebody back there who cares. I can know everything in the world, but if I don’t prove that I care, and I’m not invested in their careers and how they’re doing, then they’re not going to trust me, and they’re not going to want to pitch to me.”
The pitchers know. They never question his preparation.
“He wears it,” Logan Gilbert said. “We get one start a week, or whatever it is, and that’s like our day that we invest everything into it. But he does that every single day, for every single pitcher, as if it’s his one start. But he has to do that 130 times or whatever. It’s a lot to ask for somebody.”
The back-and-forth over pitch calling is amusing banter. The pitchers know how much preparation Raleigh puts into a game plan and pitch calling. But they still don’t always agree with his decisions.
“I know I’ve got a rep of ‘I want the pitchers to listen to me and only me,’ but I want to be there for the pitchers, to help them out as much as I can,” Raleigh said.
And yet …
“There’s been a few instances where I really believe in what they’ve got,” Raleigh said. “Most of the time they end up throwing it.”
Gilbert, who was roommates with Raleigh in the minor leagues, probably shakes off Raleigh more than any other pitcher.
“He’s done way more research than anybody else, so he usually knows what to throw,” Gilbert said. “We’ve done so much work on our individual pitches that we know how it feels more than he’ll know behind the plate how it feels. That’s just kind of where it comes from. But it’s also just fun disagreeing with him.”
They keep an unofficial score on who was right.
“If I give up a hit, afterward, I’m like, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to turn around,’” Gilbert said. “But eventually you have to. And when I turn around, he’s usually just waiting or side-eyeing me. There’s so much being said without words in that moment.”
• • •
Raleigh never asked to be the conscience of the organization. He didn’t set out to achieve that status. He isn’t interested in titles.
He’s been himself since he signed his first professional contract. This happened naturally.
“That’s just what you do,” he said. “You have a responsibility to not only yourself, but your family, your friends, the people who’ve coached you, your teammates, the organization and the fans, you have a responsibility to give everything you can. It’s a partnership.”
And while what Raleigh has done in his time with the Mariners commands respect, it doesn’t necessarily make him popular with less-committed teammates or even the people that control his future.
If you ask him what he thinks, he will tell you. He isn’t afraid of “having hard conversations or telling hard truths” even to the people in charge.
And yet, those people in charge have also started to understand him as a player and a person and his value to the organization. They also realized conscience had a cost.
But he also wasn’t trying to set any records. Asked about an extension during spring training, Raleigh said there hadn’t been a serious offer to consider. He wanted something that was fair. He certainly spoke like a player that legitimately interested in staying.
“I don’t know if there’s an exact number to be said,” Raleigh said of a desired contract. “But the way I look at it is, if you’re going into a partnership with an organization, with a team, I’m going to give them everything I got, like I have the past three, four years, then I want to know that they’re in it with me, too. I’m not trying to set any records. It’s out of my control. If that is something that they want to pursue, then I’m all ears. I love Seattle. I’ve really grown to love it so much, especially after not knowing anything about the Pacific Northwest before I came here.”
Ultimately, he wants to win.
“It’s not all about money,” he said. “Yeah, you want the dollars to be right, you want to be treated fairly with the amount you’re paid. But you also want to love the place that you’re at. And you want to know that the team wants to win, that it’s invested in winning. If they want to invest in me, that’s them telling me, ‘Hey, we believe in you to go out there and lead our team, to be our guy, to push us over the edge.’”
Raleigh pauses for a moment, staring at Gilbert and the rest of the rotation, laughing and conversing around the bullpen mounds.
His career could’ve been very different.
He almost didn’t sign with the Mariners after being selected in the third round of the 2018 draft. He reportedly had a pre-draft agreement to go the Braves. He was prepared to go back to Florida State for his senior year with the goal of winning a College World Series and improving his draft situation. It was his father and his uncle, Matt, who convinced him to sign roughly 10 minutes before the deadline.
“It’s all worked out,” he said. “I would’ve never expected all of this.”
But the talk of the past and his future will have to wait. He needs these extra at-bats to get him ready for opening day. He can’t fathom another season without making the playoffs.
Any thoughts on being the conscience of the organization?
“No,” he said. “I just want to win.”