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The conditions Saturday afternoon in Wrigley Field were ripe for home runs with the wind blowing out and it being incredibly hot. Sure enough, the Cubs hit five homers on their way to a 10-7 win over the Mariners. Seattle hit just one home run and if you were given one guess as to which player it was, you’d have surely, correctly, picked catcher Cal Raleigh.
That is Raleigh’s 30th home run of the season and the Mariners have only played 75 games. This means that not only is Raleigh still on pace to surpass 60 home runs this season, but he’s continuing to stack up the historical markers.
- Raleigh already set the record for home runs by a catcher before the All-Star break.
- Raleigh is the first player this season to the 30-homer mark. Yes, a catcher beat the likes of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani to 30.
- This is now Raleigh’s third 30-homer season, joining Hall of Famers Mike Piazza (nine times), Johnny Bench (four times) and Roy Campanella (four times) as the only catchers in history with three 30-homer seasons.
- Raleigh becomes the first switch hitter ever to reach 30 homers before the All-Star break.
- He is also the first player to reach 30 home runs in 75 of his team’s games since 2001, when both Barry Bonds and Luis Gonzalez did it.
As a reminder, the record for home runs in a season by a catcher is 48, which Salvador Perez set in 2021. The high mark for a switch hitter in one season is 54, which Mickey Mantle did in 1961. The Mariners club record is 56, which Ken Griffey Jr. did in both 1997 and 1998. The American League record is 62 (Judge in 2022) and the MLB record is 73 (Bonds in 2001).