⚾ Baseball Bytes: Cal Raleigh and MLB’s Greatest Career Years

The Big Dumper is also the biggest breakout in baseball. Plus, win-forecast movers, and Paine's favorite Peñas.

Welcome to Baseball Bytes^¹ — a column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!

⚾ Big Dumper, Bigger Year

Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners holds the bat over his head after hitting a two-run home run during the fifth inning against the Baltimore Orioles on June 5, 2025. (Alika Jenner/Getty Images)

Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh is an easy guy to root for. For one thing, any player affectionately nicknamed the “Big Dumper” for their, um, ample posterior proportions — thanks, Jarred Kelenic! — is 100 percent guaranteed fan-favorite status. But the baseball world is also waking up to the fact that Raleigh is good. Like, really good.

Going into Wednesday’s action, Raleigh was leading the majors in both home runs (32) and runs batted in (69), to go with an incredible .386/.667/1.053 slash line and a 10.1 Wins Above Replacement pace per 162 team games — second only to the great Aaron Judge among MLB players this season. He remained the only hitter in baseball this year to crack 30+ homers, de-juiced 2025 baseballs be damned. That’s not only an MVP-caliber campaign, it’s one of the best by a backstop in baseball history.

Big-league catchers have gone through their ups and downs of offensive production over the years, especially in terms of power hitting. In 1984, led by Lance Parrish (33), Gary Carter (27) and a group of five regular catchers who hit 20+ HRs — and 18 who broke double-digits — the position provided a modern high of 12.1 percent of all MLB-wide home runs. Seven years later, that number dropped to 9.1 percent in 1991, then rose to 11.6 percent in 1993, dipped to 8.1 in 2002, rose to 11.5 percent in 2012, then fell again to 9.2 percent in 2018.