Cal Raleigh Turns Tables, Blasts No. 43 as Mariners Beat Rays 3-2
SEATTLE, Wash. – Rocking. It was rocking in Seattle. After going scoreless for seven innings, the Seattle Mariners came back against the Tampa Bay Rays with a three-run shot from Cal Raleigh, the 43rd of his 2025 season and the first of a previously-slumping August.
But the Mariners as a whole have not been slumping, as they won their fifth straight game and the seventh of their previous eight contests. La Piedra balled out for seven innings, giving the Mariners the chance to come back in dramatic fashion once more and get another 3-2 win in the late innings.
Friday night once again showed the Mariners’ chemistry, their good vibes, and their ability to win in spite of adversity.
Rock Throws Seven-Inning Gem
Despite having some issues during the game, Luis Castillo’s Friday night start was the very definition of elite. He worked through the Rays lineup quite quickly, getting lots of soft contact while striking out five in total and giving out zero free passes.
Castillo struggled with his speed in the first inning, with both his four-seam and sinker velocity averaging over a mile an hour slower than his usual. And as he pelted Brandon Lowe with them up in the zone, Lowe was able to find a little contact. It’s a game of inches, after all – that extra mile an hour is a difference in rise that would have been enough to miss one of those swings. On the ninth pitch of the at-bat, Lowe sent a foul ball towards the right field corner in foul territory. Canzone got the glove to it, but it bounced off his glove and off the wall for a foul ball.
Lowe cracked a home run to right center on the very next pitch to make it 1-0 Rays. Castillo’s velocity recovered a little bit, but he still pitched the entire rest of the game about a mile an hour slower than usual.
Still, Castillo began dealing. Just one Ray reached base in the next three innings and that runner was unceremoniously put out in the next batter’s double play. The fifth presented some trouble, as two Rays reached on consecutive one-out singles. But Castillo got a couple weak flyouts to get out of the inning without any damage.
The second Tampa Bay run came in the sixth. Junior Caminero cracked a ball about a mile high down the line in left and scraped the wall by a couple feet, doubling the Rays lead. Once again, though, Castillo put it behind him and dialed it back up, getting two strikeouts in the next four batters to finish off a stellar seven-inning outing.
It’s Ichiro Weekend, Not Felix Weekend
They’re two players who got their careers diminished by that blasted playoff drought, true, but they’re different guys altogether.
For seven innings, the Mariners bats didn’t make much of a distinction, as they started off Ichiro weekend by giving Luis Castillo 22 outs of a vintage 27-out Felix Hernandez salute. Despite his incredible start, Castillo was in line for his seventh loss of the season.
But who else is left to electrify the game better than J.P. Crawford? The first runner to reach scoring position was the Mariner shortstop, who singled off Griffin Jax with one out in the eighth and moved up a station on a Cole Young base hit.
It’s called the “Electric Factory” for a reason. Even with no runs on the board, nearly 40,000 fans were roaring Randy Arozarena’s name all on their own as soon as Young touched first. But despite being one of the Mariners’ best hitters all game, going 2-4, Arozarena harmlessly popped out.
In the end, however – as I’m sure you already know and you are soon to read regardless – they Mariners did make the distinction.
One Swing
Cal Raleigh hasn’t had the best go of it since the beginning of July, really, but it’s the beginning of August where things have taken a bad turn. Raleigh came into Friday’s game just 2-23 in August, and both those hits had been singles. 14 of those at-bats (61 percent) ended in strikeouts.
It seems a lot of those struggles have boiled down to his approach at the plate. He has been swinging at a lot of bad pitches early in counts, seemingly unable to work an advantage at the plate when he needs to. Being put on the back foot all the time leads to a lot of strikeouts, while the walks have dropped off a cliff. In the first half, Raleigh walked 14.9 percent of the time – but he came into Friday having done so in just 7.2 percent of his plate appearances since the All-Star Break.
The biggest problem in result has been the whiff rate. Through the end of July, Raleigh missed on about 30.5 percent of his swings. From August 1 to August 7, he had missed on 42.9 percent of his swings. That’s only a few percent less than Dylan Moore’s infamous slump.
This isn’t helped when most of the contact is subpar, too. Of the balls he was putting in play, a good amount were pop-ups – enough to where his average launch angle in August (including tonight) is 39.5 degrees.
Raleigh’s first three at-bats weren’t very promising. With Arozarena running for second on the very first pitch Raleigh saw in the bottom of the first, the Mariners catcher popped up to first for a double play. His next time up in the fourth, he swung underneath a 3-2 fastball that caught a lot of the plate. And in the sixth, he once again popped up to first.
Jax’ first two pitches to Raleigh in the bottom of the eighth were off the plate away. “MVP” was already echoing around T-Mobile Park as soon as he stepped to the plate; the chants grew louder on each successive pitch.
A sweeper came in toward the bottom of the zone. Jax wanted it on the bottom edge and that’s where he put it. But low is where Raleigh thrives.
Seattle’s backstop put a giant swing on the ball, and unlike all his other swings that day, he connected and connected hard. Tristan Peters tracked the ball as he looked up. Many fans were already screaming in delight as they tracked the flight of the ball; hope grew in the more careful observers as they saw Peters begin to slow down and his head begin to tilt upwards.
But when the ball struck the tarp over the tunnel in right center field, four myriad swelling shouts stormed the stadium all the same. “MVP” bellowed in unison at a volume rivaling the legendary Moscow 1991 Metallica concert. With one swing, the Mariners were ahead by one run, 3-2 the score. It was all they needed.
Autumnal Ninth
It may have been August in T-Mobile Park on Friday, but Matt Brash brought everyone to October.
With a one-run lead and Andrés Muñoz unavailable, Dan Wilson went to Matt Brash for the save. Due up was the heart of the Rays order: Brandon Lowe, Junior Caminero, and Josh Lowe.
Lowe – the one that homered and whose name rhymes with now – got ahead in the count 3-1, but Brash responded with two perfectly placed strikes that Lowe watched sail past him. One away.
Caminero took the first three pitches inside for balls. But once again, Brash locked in, hitting the inside corner, the middle of the plate, and the outside corner for three straight strikes and his second strikeout.
The last batter was the second Lowe (whose name rhymes with no). Unlike his predecessors, he came within five feet of tying the game, launching a 1-1 inside slider down the line well past the fence but just a hair foul.
Just like his comrades before him, Lowe got a three-ball count. But his was a more challenging full count, and after one more foul ball, Brash climbed the ladder. 97 miles per hour left a trail of smoke as it went about three inches above the strike zone – and an inch above Lowe’s bat.
With each strikeout, the roar of the crowd grew ever more deafening. And after the final Lowe swung and missed, the fans boomed as if what they had just seen was October magic. But what they saw was simply baseball magic, and when every game matters for an intense playoff chase and all night skies are the same shade of black, August can blend into September which can blend into October.
It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over
Many who keep tabs on the Mariners are quick to declare things over before the beginning has begun to end. It’s partly a defensive response to past heartbreak, partly a vain hope that the viewer can impossibly cast a reverse jinx and make the boys put together something out there.
For seven and a half innings on Friday night, it was easy to write off the Seattle Mariners. The offense looked like it hadn’t shown up to work and was still asleep in the bed at 4:00 PM. But as another famous catcher said, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. You can never truly count a team out until the final out is made and the last player steps out of view.
And despite individual players having slumps, the August 2025 Mariners have looked like a team with chemistry, having won six of seven in the month and seven of eight since the deadline. That’s a rare sight. August is historically when the magic runs out and hopeful Mariners teams hit a brick wall of reality. There’s a lot of time for that to happen again this year, but right now?
“There’s a really good feeling in the clubhouse, there’s a lot of confidence,” Dan Wilson said. “Ws come in all shapes and sizes, and we’ll take any kind of shape and size we can get. This time of year, it’s all about Ws.”
Special Spotlight: Carlos Vargas
Lost in all the commotion and circumstance is the excellent job that Carlos Vargas did in the eighth inning, working through three Rays batters with ease to keep the deficit at two runs.
Having guys that can keep your opponents’ leads manageable is another element of a winning baseball club. A lot of fans naturally develop frustration with the low-leverage guys because they break down in higher-pressure situations when they’re the last line of defense in an exhausted bullpen deep in games, but pitchers like Carlos Vargas have provided important holes. It’s what you expect from your lower-end relievers, but it’s always good when they provide it.
Vargas now has a 3.74 ERA and a 4-5 record, though his 1.36 WHIP shows why he’s not in those high-leverage situations. Still, relievers are fickle, and there’s often no telling when a bullpen guy will put it all together – or let it all fall apart.
On Deck
The Mariners improved to 64-53 with their Friday night victory and kept pace with the Houston Astros, who still lead Seattle by one and a half games in the race for the AL West. Seattle also remains a game back of the Boston Red Sox for the first wild card, but holds the second wild card by an extended two and a half games against the New York Yankees, who cling on to the third wild card.
Two more games remain to finish out the set against the Rays and the 10-game homestand. After that, Seattle takes a day off before beginning a nine-game road trip.
