Cal Raleigh is getting some forced rest. The Mariners are hoping that’s enough.
Seattle’s All-Star catcher will be shut down for a week and re-evaluated, the team announced Tuesday. Raleigh has been on the 10-day injured list since May 14 with a right oblique strain that has nagged him for the better part of three weeks. He will receive either a PRP or cortisone injection to speed the healing process and then head to Arizona to rehab at the Mariners’ spring training complex in Peoria.
Raleigh’s latest MRI was either similar to or slightly improved from the scans that were taken earlier in the month. That’s the language teams use when there’s no clear sign of a worsening injury but also no clear sign of significant progress. It’s a frustrating in-between.
The injury has been a slow-moving problem. Raleigh first felt it in early May and missed three games against Kansas City and Atlanta from May 2-4. He came back, made it through a few starts, and then re-aggravated it in the third game of a four-game series against Houston on Wednesday. The Mariners put him on the IL the next day.
Oblique injuries are nightmares for catchers. Every throw to second base uses the oblique. Every swing twists through it. Every block in the dirt puts pressure on the core. Catchers can’t really rest the muscle while doing their job, which is why Raleigh has needed actual shutdown time instead of just taking a day off here and there.
Raleigh is also one of the most important catchers in baseball this season. He’s already in the conversation for AL MVP. The Mariners are 28-19 and leading the AL West, and their pitching staff has done that with a defensive backstop who frames pitches like an art form. Mitch Garver and Jhonny Pereda are filling in. They are not Raleigh. The Mariners will not pretend otherwise.
The Mariners have said publicly they don’t anticipate this being a long absence. They want to make sure that when Raleigh is next in a game, he is doing it pain-free and at full strength. The decision to give him an injection plus a full week of complete rest tells you the medical staff thinks the issue is muscular and resolvable, not structural.
If the rehab goes well, Raleigh could be back in the lineup the first week of June. That’s the optimistic timeline. The pessimistic version is that this lingers all summer the way oblique strains sometimes do, especially for catchers who can’t fully unload the muscle even when they’re playing through it.
What this also does is force the Mariners to figure out how Garver fits into their longer-term plan. The veteran was signed to provide insurance behind Raleigh and to platoon as a designated hitter. Now he’s the starter for at least a week, possibly longer, and his bat has to carry the lineup until Raleigh is back.
The Mariners are still in great shape in the West. Houston is wobbly. Texas has had injuries. The Astros have not been their usual selves. Seattle has the division to lose. But “in great shape” looks different without your MVP-caliber catcher behind the plate, and the next week is going to test the depth of the roster.
The good news is the injection is happening, the rest is mandatory, and the medical staff is being cautious. The bad news is that nobody really knows when oblique strains are truly healed until you put a catcher back in the squat and see how it holds up.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
