Pulling the ball wasn’t the only thing his stance/swing changes improved though. The one thing that every good hitter must be able to do is hit fastballs. If you can’t hit those, pitchers won’t even bother throwing their other pitches. In 2024 and earlier, Cal Raleigh was much better against breaking and off-speed pitches, and he struggled to consistently hit against fastballs. He always did well against sinkers, but not four-seam fastballs. Unfortunately, four-seam fastballs make up over 30% of the pitches he’s seen in his career, while sinkers are less than 10%, so it was a weakness that could be exploited. But in 2025, Raleigh turned that weakness into a strength, crushing all fastballs. Against four-seamers, he had an OPS of .925 and a 164 wRC+. Against sinkers, he was even better, slugging 1.000 with an OPS of 1.476 and a 305 wRC+.
And the fact that Raleigh achieved his success over the course of 705 plate appearances in the regular season before proceeding to demolish the ball in the postseason… well, that speaks volumes as to how sustainable his improvements are. Raleigh’s first half of 2025 was hot, and he finished the season hot as well, with a wRC+ of 220 in May and 191 in June, then 183 in September and 193 in the postseason. In the playoffs, he was beat up, exhausted, and facing the best pitchers opposing teams had to offer, but he still produced at double the rate of the average hitter. This indicates real, massive, long-lasting improvements.
The Big Dumper is unlikely to slow down now — he has made improvements to his game every single season he has been with the team. After an unsuccessful cup of coffee in 2021, Raleigh came back in 2022 with a much-improved bat, producing 4.2 fWAR. In 2023, it was the defense that saw an improvement, and he cut down his strikeout rate at the plate as well, finishing with 4.3 fWAR. In 2024, he made major improvements on both sides of the ball, improving his walk rate and quality of contact while also taking his defense to the elite level — winning both a Gold Glove and the Platinum Glove. And of course, we know what happened in 2025, when he finished as the runner-up in a controversial MVP vote. Stance and swing similarity is something I fully expect to see further refinement in this upcoming year. If he is able to continue making adjustments, he could improve his contact rates and tap into his power more often than before, which is a thrilling thought for Mariners fans.
Unfortunately, his defensive WAR dropping was probably the only reason he didn’t win the MVP. But what was it that made his defense dip in 2025? Well, it was mostly due to the ever-shrinking strike zone in the MLB. The league changed its policy on how they evaluate umpires, tightening the margin of error or ‘buffer zone’ they are judged on. In prior seasons, an umpire would only be negatively impacted in their performance evaluations for missed calls that were more than two inches off the plate (as measured by the pitch tracking system). In 2025, they would only be given the benefit of the doubt if they were less than 0.75 inches off. They also changed how the buffer zone worked—prior to 2025, only missed calls outside the zone that were given a margin of error, while pitches inside the zone were not given a buffer at all. This led to umpires being more likely to call a borderline pitch a strike, because it was less likely to affect their reviews.
So, in 2025, the 0.75 inch buffer zone was extended to both inside and outside the strike zone, which gave them a bit of leeway no matter which way the call went. This led to a noticeable decrease in borderline strikes, especially at the top of the zone. The top of the zone historically has been an area where it was easier to steal strikes, because the definition of the top of the zone is “the midpoint between the batter’s shoulders and the top of the uniform pants when the batter is in his stance and prepared to swing at a pitched ball”. Whereas the bottom of the zone is simply, “just below the kneecap”. You can understand how the definition of the top of the zone would be much harder to judge. The ABS strike zones nowadays are pre-calculated based on player’s heights and do not account for the batter’s stance.