Cal Raleigh hit a home run in four consecutive at-bats, and the last Mariner who can say that has been retired for over a decade.
The streak started with his three-homer game Monday, when Seattle finally broke a Phillies pitching staff that had won nine straight games coming into T-Mobile Park. Raleigh took Zack Wheeler deep in the first inning for two runs, went back to the well against Wheeler again in the fifth, then added a third off reliever Chase Shugart in the seventh, with a walk mixed in for good measure. The Mariners won that one 9-2, and Philadelphia’s win streak was dead before the night was over.
Tuesday, he just kept going. Leading off the second inning, Raleigh took Aaron Nola 362 feet to right field for his 18th homer of the season, and his fourth straight at-bat with a ball leaving the yard. That ties Mike Cameron’s Mariners record for consecutive at-bats with a home run, a mark that had been sitting untouched since he did it against the White Sox on May 2, 2002. Here’s the swing that did it, straight from MLB’s feed:
https://x.com/MLB/status/2092434947197780041
Twenty-four years is a long time for a record to survive in an organization that has burned through far more sluggers than playoff runs. Raleigh tied it against the same pitcher who gave it up, which is where things get good.
Nola served up the homer that tied a 24-year-old franchise record, and a few innings later, he was the one who ended it. Raleigh walked in the fourth, then struck out against Nola in the sixth, and just like that, four straight at-bats with a homer was over in the same game where it started. Nola went six innings with seven strikeouts and took the loss anyway, dropping to 5-10 on a night where he handed Raleigh a piece of Mariners history in the second inning and made sure the streak stopped right there in the sixth.
Raleigh spent most of this season buried in the worst slump of his career, the kind that needed its own article before this week ever happened. Four homers on four straight swings against a team that had won nine in a row is not the version of his summer anyone had drawn up back in June.
Tying a record isn’t breaking it, and the record he tied has been sitting there since 2002 for a reason.
George Kirby made sure Tuesday didn’t come down to just one guy’s bat anyway, working into the eighth inning with nine strikeouts and a single run allowed in a 4-1 win. That’s the version of these Mariners that makes the four-homer stretch feel less like a fluke and more like a team finally stringing together a complete summer, for whatever’s left of the rest of the MLB stretch run.
Whether Raleigh actually breaks Cameron’s record instead of just tying it is a question for another week, and if the last 48 hours are any indication, betting against him right now is a bad idea.
My grandmother still thinks the last record that matters in baseball belongs to DiMaggio, and she is not going to be impressed that a catcher in Seattle matched something from 2002. I am extremely impressed. Cal Raleigh just spent two games making Aaron Nola look like he was trying to solve a math problem with a fastball.
