“Big Dumper” Now Apt For More Depressing Reason

The sophomore slump is real, in the sense that rookies who have great seasons are rarely able to live up to such lofty expectations the following year, and fake, in the sense that it is hardly a phenomenon limited to rookies and sophomores. Rather, the sophomore slump is a manifestation of that accursèd phrase, "regression to the mean": It is difficult for any baseball player, rookie or not, to follow up a great season, perhaps even an all-time great season, with something remotely resembling it. Which is to say that Cal "Big Dumper" Raleigh was not going to dump 60 home runs all over this season like he did in 2025; the question was how much he would fall. The answer right now is: pretty damn far. Raleigh got off to a very poor start to the season, going 0-for-7 with seven strikeouts. This was very poor timing, as he had just drawn an outsized amount of attention for being a red ass to his teammate, Randy Arozarena, during the World Baseball Classic; the whimsy of a given nickname is not enough to free Raleigh from resultant schadenfreude. But before the Seattle Mariners catcher could officially be renamed "Big Slumper" in certain private circles, he picked up his offensive production in April, returning to roughly the sort of hitter he was in the four non–60-homer seasons of his career: as always a pulled fly ball machine, though with overall offensive production hovering closer to 20 percent better than the average MLB hitter, rather than 60 percent. On April 27, Raleigh hit an eighth-inning home run against the Minnesota Twins. Since then—13 days, eight games, 36 plate appearances—he has not recorded a hit.