Even in this advanced modern era of baseball analytics, catching is hard to quantify.
And in the American League MVP race, it's at the forefront. The Yankees' Aaron Judge is an outfielder and has played a lot of DH this season. The Mariners' Cal Raleigh is one of, if not the, best catchers on the planet.
So yeah, it's easy to say Judge has a much higher OPS than Raleigh. And Raleigh supporters can argue back that he's broken the single-season records for home runs by a catcher, a switch-hitter and a Mariner.
But all of that ignores Raleigh's catching, which by basically any metric has to add more value to his overall stature than whatever Judge does in the outfield.
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And while Raleigh's defensive metrics are all good, we can do this the old-fashioned way: ERA.
The Mariners have essentially had two catchers all season. Entering Wednesday night, Raleigh had caught 503 innings, and Mitch Garver had caught 184.2 innings.
The ERA of pitchers when Garver is catching: 4.44.
The ERA of pitchers when Raleigh is catching: 3.49.
Almost an entire run of difference.
Four of the Mariners' five starters have lower ERAs with Raleigh (and the only one that doesn't, Logan Gilbert, still has a 3.57 ERA with Cal).
Here’s how each (main) Mariners starter does with each catcher
— zach (@zachleft) September 24, 2025
Bryan Woo
Garver: 4.01 era
Cal: 2.56 era
Logan Gilbert
Garver: 2.70
Cal: 3.57
George Kirby
Garver: 4.64
Cal: 4.15
Luis Castillo
Garver: 3.76
Cal: 3.56
Bryce Miller
Garver: 7.67
Cal: 4.38 https://t.co/9nqMh0QtsA
Raleigh is legitimately special as a catcher, and he's approaching 60 home runs.
Judge is one of the best hitters ever, so the choice is pretty much impossible.
But if you want to make the best Raleigh case, the fact that he's an everyday star behind the plate is a really key piece of the argument.
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