00:00And I want to start with the viral struggle of Cal Raleigh, who, if I'm not mistaken, is 0 for
00:06his last 36.
00:07Cal Raleigh is. He was sporting an 0 for 34. I believe he got to 0 for 36 on Monday
00:13night.
00:13But Cal Raleigh, off of an MVP caliber season where he finished as the runner up to Aaron Judge, won
00:19a silver slugger, 60 homers, 125 driven in.
00:23It was a seven and a half win catcher through the eyes of B-War through 39 ballgames is hitting
00:28157 with a 560 OPS.
00:31Still hitting the ball out of the ballpark to a certain extent, seven homers in 39 games.
00:36But he's punched out 54 times and he's not getting on base. It's a 238 OBP.
00:42And through the eyes of war, he has been a negative player.
00:46I never saw a world, honestly, that this would happen to Cal Raleigh.
00:50His average exit velocity is down four miles per hour.
00:53And what's scary, too, is this goes back to the WBC when he wasn't playing there and getting blown up
00:58there.
00:59So now you're just telling what what is what is happening?
01:03It was a year where I think Cal wins the MVP a lot of other seasons.
01:09Have we ever seen an MVP caliber player struggle this much through?
01:14It's one thing for like the first month, but now that we're getting to a month and a half, a
01:19little bit more than that,
01:19and how bad the struggles have been, I can't remember something this outrageous and this kind of jarring.
01:27And it's a big reason why the Mariners aren't quite reaching their potential.
01:31You have the best start to the season and Julio Rodriguez's career and a notoriously slow starter is swinging it
01:36well.
01:37Could you imagine if they had this Cal to pair?
01:40157, 558 OPS.
01:42You mentioned the seven homers at least.
01:43But just seeing the average exit velocity crater by four miles per hour is really interesting to me.
01:48The average air exit velocity is down three miles per hour.
01:51And the hard hit rate is 28%.
01:52I almost wonder if something's like I would imagine if he was hurt, he wouldn't be playing.
01:57But when you look at that, you say, like, is he right physically?
02:00Because it doesn't seem like there's anything mechanically that you can point to that would imply something that dramatic of
02:08a drop off.
02:09Can I tell you, that's the scariest part of some of this, when the swing is so simple and you
02:14can't point to anything.
02:15Like, I saw Harold Reynolds had a thought that it could be timing and everything just seems a beat late
02:20for him.
02:21But, like, I think back to a couple of years ago where Spencer Torkelson on the heels of a 31
02:26homer season was optioned at AAA Toledo and could not hit anything in the big leagues.
02:31And we were sitting here trying to talk about, like, what's going wrong with Torque, and you were like, dude,
02:35there are very few things to mess up because of how simple the swing is.
02:40And I guess that is, like, when I get the heebie-jeebies on a guy, because if you point to
02:45a mechanical thing, okay, at least you have closure.
02:47It just seems like there's no closure right now with why this is happening to Cal Raleigh.
02:51Well, and he made a mechanical adjustment that allowed him to be the MVP runner-up last year.
02:57And when you look at the mechanics, they look pretty darn similar.
03:00And, like you mentioned, there's not a ton of moving parts.
03:03There's a similar conversation with Gunner.
03:04That's where, like, we were going to talk about it a couple of shows ago, and I, like, struck it
03:07from the itinerary there because I'm like, I need more time.
03:10This is such a simple swing to try to figure out what's wrong.
03:13It is 100% more stressful when you have a simple swing and the guy's not figuring it out.
03:19The other thing is, to the timing point, I don't think the air pull would take a pretty significant hit,
03:27and the launch angle would take a pretty significant hit.
03:29And Cal is still air pulling at a 43% clip, which is ridiculously strong, and he still has an
03:36average launch angle of 23 degrees.
03:38Last year's air pull was 50%, and the average launch angle was 25 degrees.
03:42So, I mean, some of it is, I'm sure, just being pitched to a little bit differently, but he was
03:46being pitched to differently by this time last year, you know, with the way he was swinging it, and especially
03:52through the playoffs where he continued to perform.
03:54The fact that he's getting blown up by four seamers is the weird part when you're still seeing the air
03:59pull being there.
04:00So, that's why the timing is, like, a good early hypothesis, but at the same time, it doesn't totally check
04:07out.
04:07And the biggest thing is, like, the dip in quality of contact that is particularly jarring, but swinging under four
04:14seams a lot, it could be just the fact that he is tardy on those, and then he's out and
04:18around, you know, softer stuff.
04:20But zone contact down, you know, 14% on four seamers is pretty wild, and maybe that's the biggest thing
04:26that's affecting him right now is just that he is under, you know, the stuff that he normally catches up
04:31to, and then it's speeding him up for stuff that's slower.
04:34And Peyton just dropped in the private chat that it could be an oblique issue that Raleigh is dealing with,
04:39which, you know, would be fascinating to know how that is affecting the swing and what goes on with Cal
04:46Raleigh.
Comments