Cal Raleigh Makes AL History with 38th Home Run Before All-Star Break
Cal Raleigh is on an absolute tear right now, and Friday night’s performance just cemented his place in the record books. If you’ve been following Mariners baseball even a little bit, you know he’s been smashing balls out of parks everywhere, but this latest milestone? This is something special.
Raleigh crushed not one, but two home runs in the Mariners’ dominant 12–3 win over the Tigers. That second shot — a grand slam in the ninth inning — wasn’t just a punctuation mark on the game; it was historic. With that swing, Cal Raleigh became the American League record-holder for most home runs before the All-Star break, launching his 38th of the season and passing Chris Davis’ 37 from 2013. That’s right — no one in AL history has hit more homers in the first half of a season than Raleigh just did.
And he’s not done yet.
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He’s now only one homer shy of tying the all-time MLB record for most first-half home runs — 39 — set by Barry Bonds in 2001. That stat alone should have every baseball fan watching Raleigh's next at-bat. To be in the same sentence as Bonds, even with the complicated legacy, is remarkable.
What makes Raleigh’s run even more impressive is his consistency. He’s not just hitting big when it counts — he’s doing it night after night. Friday marked his eighth multi-homer game of the season, tying a record for switch hitters set by none other than Mickey Mantle back in 1961. With 68 games still left, Raleigh could easily surpass Mantle, and who knows how far he’ll go?
And let’s not overlook the grand slam itself. It was a 405-foot moonshot to left field that turned the game into a blowout. That kind of power, under that kind of pressure, is exactly why Raleigh’s been tapped for both the All-Star Game and the Home Run Derby next week. Talk about deserving it.
The Mariners didn’t just rely on Cal, though. Donovan Solano jumpstarted the offense with a key triple early on — his first since 2023 — and J.P. Crawford and Julio RodrÃguez added to the scoring with clutch hits. On the mound, Luis Castillo held it down with a strong outing against one of the league’s top pitchers, Tarik Skubal, who hadn’t lost a game since April 2 — until the Mariners got to him again.
But make no mistake: Friday was Cal Raleigh’s night. From a historic grand slam to a home run pace that’s now challenging legends, he's not just having a great season — he's rewriting what we thought was possible from a catcher in the modern game.
With two more games before the break, all eyes are on him. Can he tie or even beat Bonds’ record? At this rate, nothing seems out of reach for Cal Raleigh.
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