They have done more than simply win games this post-season. They’ve slayed dragons, too. First, it was Aaron Judge and his Rogers Centre power displays. Now, it’s Cal Raleigh — and some post-season history with deep ramifications.
It’s a play that remains very much in the forefront of the minds of Toronto Blue Jays fans, and it occurred in Game 2 of the 2022 American League wild-card Series.
After being shut out 4-0 in Game 1, the Blue Jays led 8-1 after six innings before the Seattle Mariners rallied to win 10-9 after tying the game by scoring three runs on a bases-loaded, two-out fly ball off the bat of J.P. Crawford that fell between Bo Bichette and George Springer, who collided.
Springer was taken off on a cart and the Blue Jays embarked on a course correction that saw Teoscar Hernandez traded (to the Mariners) and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Gabriel Moreno traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Daulton Varsho.
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You can have a good baseball debate about that trade with the D-Backs — dealing two everyday players for one isn’t always smart — but the Hernandez deal is more complicated. It was no secret that the front office had issues with what they saw as Hernandez’s sometimes laissez-faire approach to the game’s subtler points. Plus, there was little indication that the Blue Jays were inclined to sign him when he reached free agency a year later.
Toronto didn’t get much in return: Erik Swanson, who was released in June, and Triple-A pitcher Adam Macko. Hernandez is now an integral part of the Los Angeles Dodgers lineup, with a World Series ring last season and 16 homers in 22 post-season games for L.A. The Blue Jays spent the better part of three years trying to fill his spot in the middle of their order, while trumpeting the importance of “run prevention.” The front office has admitted they might have tacked too dramatically in that direction.
But this year’s AL East title and post-season run has sort of turned the page on all that, just as manager John Schneider is no longer remembered for taking Jose Berrios out of that game in Minnesota — not after the way he and his staff ran that decisive bullpen game in the Bronx.
Now here comes Raleigh, who has a bit of history with this team and their manager. Seven of his 11 home runs against the Blue Jays have come at the Rogers Centre and he had three hits in that come-from-behind win in 2022. He had a perfect view of the aforementioned collision, standing on second base. He scored then … and scored the winning run on an Adam Frazier double.
And a year after Schneider told reporters following a game in April 2023, that Raleigh “is not very tough to pitch to when you execute your pitches,” the Mariners catcher hit a go-ahead, two-run homer in the 10th inning at the Rogers Centre and responded to a reporters question about the comment with: “If you don’t have anything nice, don’t say anything at all, I guess. He’s had a lot of beefs with people in the league, and he kind of did it to himself.
“I like coming here, it’s good memories going back to 2022.”
Schneider has apparently reached out to Raleigh but to no avail.
The AL’s most valuable player award has been a two-person race all season between Raleigh, the switch-hitting catcher with 60 home runs, and Judge, perhaps the best right-handed hitter of his generation. The votes are already in, but Judge is once again at home watching the post-season, and Raleigh has the Mariners poised to advance to their first-ever World Series. The Blue Jays, of course, haven’t been there since winning the second of back-to-back titles in 1993.
Here, then, is our Six to Watch in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., 1B, Blue Jays:
Brent Maguire of MLB.com did a fascinating deep dive into Guerrero Jr.’s post-season that showed his bat speed had increased, along with his tendency to hit the ball in the air, and his whiff rate decreased, among other factors. I wrote before the start of the ALDS that in my mind this post-season marked the start of the star slugger’s half-a-billion dollar contract extension, and with a home run in his first at bat and homers in the first three games, well, I felt pretty good. Add in his hustle, defence and ability to suck the oxygen out of the series time and again and that somewhat anonymous regular-season seems well in the past.
But he’ll be facing better pitching in this series — possibly once again without Bo Bichette hitting behind him. The Blue Jays’ offensive approach is one of contact-heaviness, and Guerrero Jr. has really fallen in lockstep this post-season, striking out just once against the Yankees. The Mariners, meanwhile, ranked bottom five in defence during the regular season, giving hope that the approach could once again bear fruit.
Although there’s a bit of a cloud over Toronto because Bichette aggravated his knee injury could remain absent, nobody is better placed to shoo those concerns than Vladdy.
Bryce Miller, SP, Mariners:
After a 15-inning marathon on Friday night and a long transcontinental flight on Saturday night, it will fall to the Mariners’ Game 1 starter to give his team a breather or at least provide a steadying influence. There is no bigger edge among these two teams than the one provided by Seattle’s starting rotation — especially if, as expected, Bryan Woo returns from a bout of pectoral tightness to make a mid-series start. Miller is the only starter who did not pitch in Game 5 of the Mariners’ ALDS win over the Detroit Tigers and will be on short rest after a 4 1/3 inning start in Detroit on Wednesday. He and Kevin Gausman will set the tone for their teams in this series
Josh Naylor, 1B, Mariners:
Few teams had a better trade deadline than the Mariners, who acquired Eugenio Suarez and Naylor in separate deals with the Diamondbacks. Naylor, a native of Mississauga and one of two Canadians on the Mariners — along with Kingston, Ont.’s Matt Brash — went 6-for-10 and scored three of the Mariners’ six runs in Games 4 and 5 while stealing third in the deciding game and scoring the first run on a subsequent sacrifice fly.
Naylor, one of a Major League lead-tying eight Mariners with 100-plus plate appearances and an OPS of 1.100, joined Paul Goldschmidt and Jeff Bagwell as the only first baseman in MLB history to post a 20-plus HR and 30 stolen bases season. To say the base-stealing came out of nowhere would be an understatement, considering Naylor had 24 career steals coming into the season. I mean, I know the bases are larger, but — well, let’s ask Mariners bench coach Manny Acta to explain it.
“He sees things on the field the other 25 guys don’t see,” Acta told us on Blair & Barker. “He’s a real student of the game.”
Naylor seemed to find himself in the middle of every key rally in the ALDS and even engaged in some jackassery, seemingly signalling pitch set-ups from second base (we all know how the Blue Jays love that), and is 16-for-51 (.314) at the Rogers Centre. He’s eligible for free agency this winter and has certainly broadened his market.
Cal Raleigh, C, Mariners:
Everything else aside, let’s be blunt about Raleigh’s importance in this series: among all players with at least 56 plate appearances at the Rogers Centre, Raleigh has the highest OPS (1.195) and slugging percentage, with a slash line of .300/.375/.820.
He has 11 homers in 26 games against Toronto and with Julio Rodriguez behind him, there’s no easy approach for an opposing manager. He has gotten in the head of the Blue Jays at times — Jose Berrios and Raleigh had an on-field argument over what Berrios saw as Raleigh giving pitch location — but of particular concern to the Blue Jays ought to be his ability to handle splitters, as Raleigh had an OPS of 1.159 against said pitch-type in the regular season.
Meanwhile, Raleigh’s elite defence will surely come into play against the aggressive Blue Jays.
Beyond that, Raleigh has an opportunity to join an exclusive, elite group. There have been 10 60-homer seasons, including Raleigh this year, with Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire accomplishing the feat multiple times. But only two of those players — Babe Ruth (1927) and Roger Maris (1961) — made it to the World Series the same year in which they hit the figure.
Louis Varland, RP, Blue Jays:
I doubt we’ll see a repeat of a bullpen game in this series — although you should never say never in 2025 — but that doesn’t mean Varland will be any less important in the ALCS. We know velocity plays in the post-season, and he has the best of anybody on the Blue Jays. But it’s the added potential presented by that five-pitch mix that makes him an intriguing arm in a series where hitters will get multiple looks. The Blue Jays’ braintrust showed they were willing to be aggressive in their bullpen game, using Seranthony Dominguez as early as they did, and even with a fourth starter coming into play, there’s no reason to expect anything different. Varland is going to pop up in big spots … maybe even the biggest spots.
Trey Yesavage, SP, Blue Jays:
Can’t really overthink this one, you know? Yesavage’s performance in Game 2 of the ALDS had a whiff of history and hysteria about it.
We all know the story — height of delivery, arm-angle, etc. — but in my mind, Yesavage becomes even more important given the uncertain status of the rest of the rotation. Shane Bieber was hugely disappointing in Game 3 of the ALDS, getting just five whiffs on 54 pitches in a 2 2/3-inning stint, and nobody really knows what to expect from Max Scherzer or Chris Bassit, who had to sit back and watch the last series.
One cautionary note: Yesavage recorded 11 whiffs with his splitter on 16 swings against the Yankees, but the Mariners’ Raleigh and Rodriguez feast on the pitch.
Meanwhile, Schneider admitted that sending Yesavage to the bullpen in Game 4 of the ALDS was largely a mind-game for Yankees manager Aaron Boone; that Yesavage wasn’t really an option until Game 5. We’ll see how he features in a longer series.
Prediction
Blue Jays def. Mariners 4-2
