The sophomore slump is real, in the sense that rookies who have great seasons are rarely able to live up to such lofty expectations the following year, and fake, in the sense that it is hardly a phenomenon limited to rookies and sophomores. Rather, the sophomore slump is a manifestation of that accursèd phrase, "regression to the mean": It is difficult for any baseball player, rookie or not, to follow up a great season, perhaps even an all-time great season, with something remotely resembling it. Which is to say that Cal "Big Dumper" Raleigh was not going to dump 60 home runs all over this season like he did in 2025; the question was how much he would fall. The answer right now is: pretty damn far.
Raleigh got off to a very poor start to the season, going 0-for-7 with seven strikeouts. This was very poor timing, as he had just drawn an outsized amount of attention for being a red ass to his teammate, Randy Arozarena, during the World Baseball Classic; the whimsy of a given nickname is not enough to free Raleigh from resultant schadenfreude. But before the Seattle Mariners catcher could officially be renamed "Big Slumper" in certain private circles, he picked up his offensive production in April, returning to roughly the sort of hitter he was in the four non–60-homer seasons of his career: as always a pulled fly ball machine, though with overall offensive production hovering closer to 20 percent better than the average MLB hitter, rather than 60 percent.
On April 27, Raleigh hit an eighth-inning home run against the Minnesota Twins. Since then—13 days, eight games, 36 plate appearances—he has not recorded a hit.
Raleigh's season-opening streak pales in comparison to the one he is currently on, which has some eye-wateringly pungent aromatics of ass. In the 36 plate appearances since his last hit, Raleigh has walked three times and recorded a sacrifice fly, which means that he has gone 0-for-32, with 15 strikeouts. His slash line for the month of May—a sample size of six games, three of which were against the Chicago White Sox—looks like .000/.077/.000.
Though a streak like this always requires some amount of bad luck, Raleigh has not been experiencing some extraordinary streak of such, at least not of the BABIP variety. Of the 18 balls he has managed to make contact with since his last hit, only three have had an xBA (expected batting average, using only launch angle and exit velocity) over .200. One of them was a soft grounder to the pitcher. Another was a smoked 102.6 mph fly ball to dead center that would've been a home run in nine other ballparks, which became his one sac fly. The last ended like this:
It is safe to say at this point that Raleigh is more Big Slumper than Big Dumper, but regression to the mean doesn't fully encapsulate his current streak. If there was a miracle to last year, it was, yes, the 60 home runs, but also the 159 games played, the third consecutive season in which Raleigh played in 145 games or more. Before Raleigh became the seventh player in history to hit 60 home runs in a season, he broke the record for most home runs by a catcher. This was notable because an every-day catcher suffers the most wear and tear of any position player. Raleigh's slump has an easy explanation: He is hurt.
Raleigh missed three straight games in May with right side discomfort and came back to play regardless, dodging a stint on the IL. This is perhaps the most salient mean to which he has regressed—that of the big-league catcher. He got hurt, and he is playing through the hurt, as catchers often do.
Or, hey, maybe he got cursed by some cosmic horror for not shaking his teammate's hand, resetting the karmic balance from last year. If we're going to believe in Etsy Witches, we may as well believe in that too.
