Cal Raleigh ties Ken Griffey Jr.'s HR record in Mariners' win over Pirates

Tim Booth, The Seattle Times on Jul 4, 2025

Published in Baseball

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SEATTLE — Within a short span during the first couple weeks of what’s officially summer, there are several benchmarks that show up in a baseball season.

Teams reach the 81-game mark, the true midway mark of the season. The All-Star break comes a couple weeks later and is generally considered the midpoint of the season even if more than half the games are already played.

And there’s the Fourth of July, the day where baseball inside big stadiums or Wiffle ball in tiny neighborhoods is part of the festivities. Flags fly, teams wear specialty caps and every major league team is in action.

This July 4 will be long remembered in Seattle as the day the legend of Cal Raleigh’s year checked off another box. Raleigh set a new career high in home runs after just 88 games of what’s turning into a historic season.

In the process, he wrote his name into the Mariners record book alongside Ken Griffey Jr., reaching a mark that felt untouchable until these magical few months of slugging by the Big Dumper.

Raleigh homered twice on Friday afternoon, lifting the Mariners to a 6-0 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates in the opener of a three-game weekend series. He now has 35 home runs, the most in baseball. It also tied with Griffey for the most by a Mariners player before the All-Star break.

Raleigh’s 34th homer was a majestic shot into the second deck of left field at T-Mobile Park in the first inning, a two-run shot that gave the M’s an early lead. It left the bat at 115.2 mph — the hardest hit ball of his career — and traveled an estimated 433 feet via MLB Statcast. It echoed with the satisfying crack of a 92 mph fastball connecting with a perfectly synced swing.

That homer matched Raleigh’s previous career high, set last season. Consider that last year when Raleigh did get to 34 homers, his final homer came in his 627th plate appearance on the final day of the season.

This season, No. 34 came in his 377th plate appearance.

And he wasn’t done. Homer No. 35 wasn’t as majestic and didn’t go as far, but still had the distance to scrape over the wall in left and give the Mariners a 4-0 lead in the sixth inning. While he pulled even with Griffey as the only Mariners to reach 35 homers before the break, he also joined the following company as the only players with at least 35 homers in a team’s first 88 games of a season: Babe Ruth (1921, 28), Jimmie Foxx (1932), Roger Maris (1961), Reggie Jackson (1969), Griffey (1998), Mark McGwire (1998), Luis Gonzalez (2001) and Barry Bonds (2001).

It was also an important day both in the field and at the plate from Randy Arozarena. In the field, Arozarena saved a pair of runs with a terrific sliding catch down the left-field line to end the first inning. Oneil Cruz sent a pop up down the line that was too deep for Ben Williamson to get back to, but Arozarena was able to close and make the sliding grab, leaving runners stranded at second and third.

Then in the fourth inning, Arozarena continued his hot streak during this homestand hitting his fifth homer in five games. Arozarena’s opposite field drive tucked inside the right-field foul pole and gave the M’s a 3-0 lead.

Dylan Moore also snapped his painful slump at the plate, with a line drive two-run homer in the seventh inning. Moore had been one for his previous 38 with 24 strikeouts before homering for the first time since May 22 in Houston.

And not to be forgotten was another quality start from Bryan Woo, throwing six shutout innings with eight strikeouts and only three hits allowed. Woo has pitched at least six innings in all 17 of his starts this season and ended his outing with a flourish thanks to the combo of Julio Rodríguez and Donovan Solano.

With one on and one out in the sixth, Cruz hit a line drive to center that Rodríguez caught and was able to double Nick Gonzales off first base after taking off on the pitch, with Solano making a nice play grabbing the short-hop throw and getting his foot on the bag.

Woo is one of two pitchers in baseball with at least 100 strikeouts, an ERA under 3.00 and less than 20 walks. The other: reigning Cy Young winner and former Seattle University pitcher Tarik Skubal.

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