Cal Raleigh Ties, Breaks Bench's Record For Catcher Homers Before All-Star Break
Mariners' catcher Cal Raleigh is having a truly great season. The switch-hitting slugger went deep twice against the Cubs on Friday at Wrigley Field, for home runs 28 and 29 of the 2025 season, allowing him to tie and then pass Hall of Famer Johnny Bench's record for homers by a catcher before the All-Star break.
The first blast came in the top of the first inning, a solo shot with two outs to put the Mariners up 1-0. That tied Bench's mark, set in 1970 in what would be the first of two MVP-winning seasons for the Reds' star. It took Bench 87 games to go deep 28 times, but Raleigh managed the feat in his 73rd game of the season. And it took just a few innings more for Big Dumper to set a new benchmark with his 29th dinger of the year.
That's not all, however. Raleigh came into Friday's game as MLB's home run leader at any position: having 29 puts him three up on Aaron Judge, four up on Shohei Ohtani, and six ahead of Kyle Schwarber. That he hit two also added to another chase, which is that of the most multi-homer games in a single season by a catcher. Per MLB's Sarah Langs , Raleigh now has six of them in 2025, tying him with Mike Piazza's 1995 with the Dodgers for the second-most all-time, behind only Javy Lopez's 2003 with the Braves, when he went yard multiple times per game on eight occasions.
If Raleigh makes it to 30 homers, it will be the third 30-homer season of his career, which would be the fourth-most ever by any primary catcher, behind Mike Piazza (nine times), Bench (four times) and Roy Campanella (also four). Raleigh is 28 years old, and in his fourth full season in the majors — it's not difficult to imagine him, conservatively, ending up in second place on that list.
Longevity is rarely the name of the game behind the plate, however, which is one reason why Piazza's career was as special as it was — he's the all-time leader in home runs as a catcher with 399, with 427 long balls in all. Prognosticating beyond the next few years with a catcher is tricky, at best.
For now, however, Raleigh has already made history as a backstop, and has a few weeks' worth of games left to pad that total, too. The next mark in sight, beyond the multi-homer one? Salvador Perez's single-season home run record for catchers of 48, set in 2021.
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