announced last week<\/a> that Raleigh will be competing in the Home Run Derby. The derby will be held on July 14, the night before the All-Star Game, at Truist Park in Atlanta.<\/p>\nIt’s the first derby appearance for Raleigh, also known as the Big Dumper. This season, Raleigh became the first catcher and first switch-hitter to reach 30 homers before the All-Star break.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited to represent the Mariners and our fanbase,\u201d Raleigh said in a statement. \u201cIt will be extra special for me getting to do it in Atlanta, where I spent a lot of time playing baseball as a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
No catcher has ever won the Home Run Derby, which began in 1985.<\/p>\n
Raleigh becomes the eighth Seattle player to compete in the derby, joining Hall of Famers Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez along with Jay Buhner, Alex Rodriguez, Bret Boone, Robinson Can\u00f3, and current teammate Julio Rodr\u00edguez. Griffey won the event in 1994, 1998, and 1999, and in 1993, he became the only player to hit the B&O Warehouse at Camden Yards on the fly.<\/p>\n
Cal is one home run away from matching his career-high 34 home runs, set during the 2024 season,” wrote MLB. “The Mariners backstop has led his position in homers in 3 consecutive seasons (2022-24) and is on pace to become the first player to lead catchers in homers in 4 consecutive seasons since Hall of Famer Mike Piazza. Raleigh, who has 126 career home runs which are the most by a catcher in franchise history, is 2 homers away from tying Piazza for most through a catcher\u2019s first 5 seasons.<\/p>\n
The full American and National League All-Star Game rosters for the 95th MLB All-Star Game at Truist Park will be announced on July 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 Major League Baseball announced Wednesday that Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh has been selected as the starting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[6546,152,5,3297,3518,1017,3385,620,4,619,65,3235],"class_list":{"0":"post-148339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-mariners","8":"tag-all-star-game","9":"tag-american-league","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-cal-raleigh","12":"tag-catcher","13":"tag-home-run-derby","14":"tag-home-runs","15":"tag-mariners","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-seattle","18":"tag-seattle-mariners","19":"tag-seattlemariners"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114787807697064295","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}