Cal Raleigh is used to hearing the names of Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey Jr. in the same sentence. Just not alongside his own.

Well, the Seattle Mariners’ superstar is about to get used to hearing that.

Mariners’ 10th straight win brings them closer to AL’s No. 2 seed

With two swings on Tuesday night, Raleigh passed Mantle for the record of most home runs in a single season by a switch-hitter with his 55th homer, then equaled Griffey’s franchise record with his 56th to help the first-place Mariners blow out the Kansas City Royals 12-5 for their 10th straight win.

It’s a lot to take in for the 28 year old from North Carolina.

“I mean, I feel like my name shouldn’t be in the same sentence with those guys, Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey Jr.,” Raleigh said on MLB Network’s MLB Tonight after Tuesday’s game. “I don’t really have words for it. I don’t really know what to say. I’m sure one day it’ll kind of set in, but for now, you know, just keep it going.”

The Mariners will be just fine if he does. They’re closing in on returning to the playoffs for the first time since 2022, when Raleigh first made history with a walk-off homer that clinched a postseason berth for Seattle, ending a 21-year drought.

Raleigh has had as much to do with the Mariners’ push to the top of the AL West as anyone this year.

“It just doesn’t even seem real,” said Mariners teammate Dominic Canzone after he had a big night himself, going 5 for 5 with three homers in Tuesday’s win. “I mean, he just does it every single day, and he’s doing it behind the plate as well. So just to have that type of a performance out of your catcher, it’s something that you really don’t see. It’s, like, a once-in-a-lifetime type of player.”

With all the history Raleigh has made this year, which also includes breaking the single-season record for most home runs by a catcher, he keeps losing equipment.

“I might need them to send me some new bats, I might be running low on those,” Raleigh quipped to reporters Tuesday night. “They keep taking (them) away.”

The way Raleigh has handled this season, which has come with exponentially more attention – particularly on the national stage – than he’d ever received in his previous four MLB seasons stands out to his manager.

“I think he’s approached this from Day 1 with a ton of humility,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “That’s the kind of person he is. His desire is to win, and that’s what he wants to do here in Seattle is win, and that’s where his drive comes from and that’s the way he has approached this whole thing.

“Cal just continues to check off these milestones, and he does it with such a humble heart. He has handled it all so incredibly well.”

This post includes quotes originally run in an article by The Associated Press.

More Seattle Mariners coverage

• Top Mariners prospect Colt Emerson homers in Triple-A debut
• ESPN’s Passan: What it could cost Mariners to keep Josh Naylor
• AL West Race: Astros take big hit with Yordan Alvarez out indefinitely
• Passan: ‘The Mariners go on heaters when Jorge Polanco goes on heaters’
• The numbers behind Seattle Mariners’ red-hot September surge