The Post\u2019s Mark W. Sanchez previews the AL\u00a0West:<\/p>\n
1. Seattle Mariners<\/p>\n
O\/U Wins: 89.5<\/p>\n
Key Player: Cal Raleigh. It bears repeating: Playing the game\u2019s most consuming and demanding defensive position \u2014 a catching spot in which plenty of clubs punt offense \u2014 Raleigh challenged Aaron Judge\u2019s AL record in demolishing 60 home runs last season. Is the switch-hitting, butt-having All-Star now one of the premier players and attractions in the game? Or did Raleigh, whose previous career high was 34 home runs, enjoy an aberrational season and return to being a good but not great slugger?<\/p>\n
Player who\u2019ll need to step up: George Kirby. Few have developed starting pitching better than Seattle, which has surrounded Luis Castillo with excellent under-30 arms. But Kirby\u2019s ascension was paused last season when he was first sidelined with a shoulder injury, then was shaky in returning to the mound during a season his ERA rose by more than half a run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Post\u2019s Mark W. Sanchez previews the AL\u00a0West: 1. Seattle Mariners O\/U Wins: 89.5 Key Player: Cal Raleigh.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2392],"tags":[537,5,226,3297,384,54,56,1327,620,603,4,81741,619,65,3235,185,428,69,2264],"class_list":{"0":"post-641552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-mariners","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-brandon-nimmo","11":"tag-cal-raleigh","12":"tag-corey-seager","13":"tag-houston-astros","14":"tag-los-angeles-angels","15":"tag-luis-severino","16":"tag-mariners","17":"tag-mike-trout","18":"tag-mlb","19":"tag-mlb-preview-2026","20":"tag-seattle","21":"tag-seattle-mariners","22":"tag-seattlemariners","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-sports-plus","25":"tag-texas-rangers","26":"tag-yordan-alvarez"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641552","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=641552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}