Cal Raleigh Lands on First IL Stint of Career With Oblique Strain: Mariners in Trouble
Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh is on the 10-day injured list with a right oblique strain, the first IL stint of his career. The reigning AL MVP runner-up was already scuffling at the plate, and now the Mariners are going to have to navigate the next several weeks without their most important position player. This is bad news in a division where Seattle cannot afford to slip.
The timeline goes like this. Raleigh missed three games from May 2 to May 4 with right side soreness. He came back and tried to play through it. On Wednesday, he aggravated the injury in the eighth inning of a 4-3 loss to the Astros. The IL move was made Thursday morning, and the Mariners recalled Jhonny Pereda to fill the roster spot.
Oblique strains are a particular kind of frustrating injury for hitters. They affect the rotational power that drives the swing, and they tend to linger because the obliques are constantly engaged in baseball activity. Even sitting in the dugout, you breathe with your obliques. Trying to rush back from one of these almost always results in a setback.
The Mariners and Raleigh are not putting a hard timeline on the return. The plan is to shut Raleigh down from baseball activity for a week, then go week-to-week. He is expected to transition his rehab to the team’s spring training facility in Arizona. That sounds like a multi-week absence at minimum, and probably closer to a month.
For Raleigh, the timing of the injury is brutal. He was hitting in the .210 range with 6 home runs through 42 games, which is a disappointing start coming off a 33-homer MVP-runner-up season. The bat had been showing signs of life in the last couple of weeks, and now he has to start the rebuild from a hospital bed.
For the Mariners, the loss is enormous. Raleigh is not just a power bat. He is one of the best defensive catchers in the league, an elite pitch framer, and the leader of a pitching staff that needs every advantage it can get. Pereda is a fine backup, but he is not going to provide the same value behind the plate, and the offense gets a lot thinner without Raleigh’s middle-of-the-order presence.
The AL West is going to be a fight all year. The Astros are dealing with a Carlos Correa injury. The Rangers are back to being competitive. The Athletics are still rebuilding but have some real talent. Seattle needed Raleigh to be a star to win the division, and losing him for a month or more puts the playoff math in jeopardy.
Dan Wilson and the Mariners brass have to figure out how to keep the team afloat during this stretch. The rotation needs to step up. The lineup needs Julio Rodriguez and Cal Raleigh in the heart of the order. With Raleigh gone, Julio has to carry an even bigger load offensively, and that is a lot to ask of a 25-year-old.
One thing to watch is whether the Mariners get aggressive in the trade market. With Raleigh’s status uncertain, Seattle might need to add a catcher who can actually hit. The names on the market are not great, but the front office has to be looking. A 60-game stretch with replacement-level production from the catcher position is going to bury this team.
For Raleigh, the focus has to be on coming back healthy, not coming back fast. He had a hunch this was going to require an IL stint when the soreness first showed up, and he was right. Getting the oblique fully healed before he tries to play through it again is the only way to salvage the second half. Push it too hard, and the season is over.
Mariners fans, buckle in. The next month is going to be rough.
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.
