How the Mariners' Logan Gilbert and Cal Raleigh developed alongside each other into foundational pieces of the team's success

Not long after he hit one of the biggest home runs in Mariners history — the walk-off winner against Oakland that ended Seattle’s infamous playoff drought in September 2022 — Cal Raleigh’s teammate responsibilities extended into the offseason.

That fall, he was a groomsman for one of his closest friends, Logan Gilbert. The two had grown close since being drafted in 2018, as they climbed the minor-league ladder together before debuting in 2021 and quickly cementing themselves as core members of Seattle’s roster.

But even though Raleigh wasn’t the only Mariner in attendance, Gilbert’s wedding represented something of an awkward, if amusing, reunion for his batterymate. Because long before Gilbert and Raleigh became big-league teammates, they occupied opposing dugouts during a series of Sunshine State showdowns between Raleigh’s Florida State Seminoles and Gilbert’s Stetson Hatters.

Much to Gilbert’s chagrin, Raleigh made a strong impression during those games.

“I’m pretty sure he hit a home run against three of the other groomsmen — at least two of those guys,” Gilbert told Yahoo Sports. “He hit so well against us.”

“I account for one of them,” confirmed left-hander Ben Onyshko, one of Gilbert’s teammates at Stetson who was also selected by the Mariners in the 2018 draft and pitched in the organization for six seasons. “They'd hit so many homers. It was kind of demoralizing because we played good games against other in-state teams, like Miami or UCF. We’d go to Florida State and just get rocked every single time.”

As the ace of Stetson’s staff who threw almost exclusively on Friday nights, Gilbert did not pitch against Raleigh and the Seminoles in any of the midweek contests the teams played across their three years in school. Instead, Gilbert’s peers were left to deal with the slugging catcher, and it didn’t go great: In seven games, Raleigh hit .350 with four home runs — one as a freshman, one as a sophomore and two as a junior — and was walked 10 times. The Seminoles outscored the Hatters 56-29 over the first six games before Stetson finally eked out a 5-3 win toward the end of Raleigh’s and Gilbert’s junior year.

How did Gilbert and Onyshko choose to handle their former nemesis becoming their teammate after they were all drafted by Seattle in 2018?

“It was something we probably didn't bring up a ton because we knew how it went,” Gilbert said. “So we were kind of just hoping he forgot about it.”

They weren’t so lucky. “I remember the games,” Raleigh said. “And I always give Logan a hard time.”

“We weren't ever gonna live that down as a group,” Gilbert added.

Now in their fourth big-league season, it’s much easier for the duo to look back and laugh at their lopsided collegiate history. Those matchups as amateurs have become funny footnotes in the evolution of Gilbert and Raleigh as players and people on their journey to becoming fixtures in the Mariners organization. As Seattle ascended out of a rebuild that saw dramatic roster turnover in 2019 and 2020, a new era of Mariners baseball defined by homegrown pitching began to take shape, with Gilbert — a prototypical workhorse starter with an intense desire to improve — and Raleigh — a power-hitting field general tasked with managing and supporting the next wave of Seattle hurlers — at the forefront.

It’s difficult to imagine where the Mariners would be at this point if they hadn’t secured both foundational pieces in the same draft six years ago. So it’s good news that they did.

‘Is this the best catcher in the draft?’

The son of Todd Raleigh, who spent 12 seasons as a head coach at Western Carolina and Tennessee, Cal Raleigh was one of the top high school players in North Carolina in the Class of 2015. He was originally committed to play third base and catcher at Clemson, but a coaching change at Clemson shortly after Raleigh graduated high school prompted a late switch to Florida State. A lack of catching depth for the Seminoles soon resulted in a full-time move behind the plate for Raleigh.

He made an immediate impact, earning freshman All-America honors and regard as one of the most promising catchers in college baseball. Then a disappointing sophomore season dropped his prospect stock entering his draft year in 2018. He bounced back with a strong year offensively as a junior, but evaluators still had concerns about his offensive track record and questions about his defensive abilities behind the dish.

“He was down on the national lists,” Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said. “He wasn’t popping as an industry high pick.”

Even so, during Seattle’s pre-draft meetings, proponents of Raleigh’s potential began to speak up. One such voice was Frankie Piliere, now Miami’s director of amateur scouting.

“Frankie held up his hand and said, ‘I know that he's going to show up a little further down the model. But the guy we can't forget here is Cal Raleigh,’” Dipoto recalled.

Multiple scouts and cross-checkers followed suit with their praise.

“He started crawling up our board,” Dipoto said. “Cal just kept getting voted up to the point where he went from a guy we probably didn't introduce to our discussion until somewhere well into the first week of our national meetings to, ‘Hey, is this guy the best catcher in this draft?’”

Raleigh ultimately lasted until the third round, when Seattle scooped him up with the 90th overall pick. Fast-forward to today, and despite being the seventh backstop selected, Raleigh leads all catchers from the 2018 draft in both games played and WAR.

‘If everything clicks, this guy could get drafted’

While Raleigh was in Tallahassee playing for a perennial powerhouse, at Stetson, Gilbert matriculated at a strong mid-major program known for producing two Cy Young Award winners in Corey Kluber and Jacob deGrom. A skinny kid from just outside Orlando with a fastball touching 90 mph on occasion, Gilbert was one of countless raw but projectable prep pitchers in search of another gear at the college level.

It didn’t take long for him to find one.

“He was that tall, lanky kid that's like, ‘If everything clicks, this guy could get drafted. He could be pretty good,’” Onyshko said. “And then his sophomore year, he absolutely took off.”

Gilbert pitched primarily out of the bullpen as a freshman before securing a weekend rotation role early in his second season. The best start of his college career came that April against Florida Gulf Coast, when Gilbert carried a perfect game into the eighth inning and navigated around two ninth-inning baserunners to secure a 1-0 victory. His eye-popping final line: two hits allowed across nine shutout innings with zero walks and 18 strikeouts on 135 pitches.

“That was when it was like, ‘Holy s***. This guy is really good,’” Onyshko said.

Gilbert followed his splendid sophomore spring with another seven fantastic starts in the Cape Cod League, spiking his draft stock further. With Seattle slated to pick 14th in the following summer’s draft, it didn’t seem realistic to invest too much time in scouting Gilbert as his junior season commenced.

"Coming off of his summer on the Cape, it was pretty consistent among our scouting leadership group that we thought he was in the discussion for [the first overall pick],” Dipoto said. "Frankly, we were focused on other areas early on because we assumed he would be off the board.”

But while Gilbert continued to dominate in his junior season, leading all Division I pitchers in strikeouts with 163 in 112 1/3 innings, his velocity was notably down — in the 90-92 range rather than the mid-90s heat he’d demonstrated the year prior. Suddenly, a top-five or even top-10 selection wasn’t a certainty.

So when Gilbert was still on the board at pick No. 14, Seattle’s draft room was ecstatic.

“When it became more evident as our national meetings went along that he might get to us, it was an easy yes,” Dipoto said. “We had a particularly high opinion of Logan as a person, as a fit for our organization — and his curiosity, his intelligence, his adaptability. So we had a pretty good feel for who he was, and when he showed up, it took [only] a minute to recognize that our guys got it right.”

Assistant general manager Andy McKay, who previously served as the club’s director of player development, echoed that sentiment when reflecting on his earliest interactions with both Gilbert and Raleigh after they joined the organization.

“It became abundantly clear, quickly, that they checked every box,” he said. “What you learn by going through this … you can go scout players. You can watch them play. You can do in-home visits. But you know that player better four or five days after signing them than you could have ever known beforehand.

“And especially with these two, it was just immediate. These guys were here to work.”

‘I don't think it's something we asked him to do’

The work — and the camaraderie — began in earnest when Gilbert and Raleigh were roommates at Seattle’s offseason high performance camp following the 2018 season. “It was just lifting, running, conditioning, meetings, mental skills stuff,” Raleigh explained. “That's kind of where I got to know him a little bit and kind of built the friendship because we weren't really doing anything baseball-related.”

Mariners manager Scott Servais, a former big-league backstop himself, remembers seeing Raleigh for the first time during 2019 spring training.

“I was just kind of shocked how physically mature he was. It doesn't really fit the mold of the durable catcher that's going to be able to stay back there and catch 115-120 games,” Servais said, hinting at the skepticism that appeared in scouting reports from Raleigh’s amateur days. “It's like, ‘Wow, this is a pretty big dude. How flexible is he going to be?’ And I started watching him catch, like, ‘Oh, this is interesting.’ Because when he started getting in different setups, he was super flexible, really athletic for a big guy.

“And that was even before I ever saw him swing a bat.”

The bat translated quickly. Raleigh homered in his first at-bat of the 2019 season, and across 121 games, 28 more homers followed, more than any other catcher in the minor leagues hit that year. Even more encouraging for the Mariners was how Raleigh attacked his development on defense, mastering the intricacies and responsibilities of catching at the professional level. A lot of that learning took place alongside Gilbert, who was Raleigh’s teammate with High-A Modesto for two months before the two were promoted to Double-A simultaneously in mid-July.

Dipoto recalls visiting Modesto and witnessing the early stages of Raleigh and Gilbert getting in sync.

“I remember walking in there the day that Logan was going to start, and Cal is sitting down there with him, with the lineup, and they're going through the lineup card,” he said. “And Cal wasn't catching that day, but he was sitting with Logan going through his progression, like the way he should go through this lineup.

“And then I watched as Cal sat on a ball bucket on a step in the dugout, with the chart in his hand, and he was charting Logan's game. And then when Logan would come back to the dugout, Logan would sit down with Cal, and as I recall, he had a little notebook, and he would jot down notes. I thought that was remarkable for a young guy because I don't think it's something we asked him to do.”

Although the 2020 minor-league season was canceled, Gilbert and Raleigh continued to develop together at the team’s alternate site.

“It was an interesting point for me because I already kind of had the pieces that I was going to use in my debut,” Gilbert said. “Obviously I've changed a lot since then, but it was close enough to a finished product that we knew what it was going to look like. And Cal was helping me put the final touches on that … seeing what would work, what didn't, putting an entire arsenal together.”

‘He can be the nicest guy in the world — and then he's the ultimate competitor’

If meticulous preparation defined Raleigh’s climb through the minor leagues — and continues to exemplify what makes him a great big leaguer — Gilbert’s rise and subsequent success are best understood through his intense competitiveness and unwavering commitment to improvement. That competitive fire exists in stark contrast to the mellow, ultra-kind personality that he displays off the field.

“He's one of the nicest humans you'll ever meet,” McKay said. But on the mound, it’s a different story. Even in an empty ballpark during scrimmages leading up to the shortened 2020 season, Gilbert’s passion was on full display.

McKay recalls umpiring one such scrimmage between big leaguers and prospects — and which player it was who took issue with his calls, yelling at him from the mound.

“It wasn't one of the established big leaguers — it was Logan,” he said. “And I just love that about him because he can be the nicest guy in the world — and then he's the ultimate competitor.”

That drive and curiosity about his craft fueled Gilbert to continue adjusting his repertoire even after he established himself as a big-league starter.

“Before, it was big shapes on a lot of pitches and different arm slots,” Raleigh said of Gilbert’s offerings early on. “And I think when he got to the big leagues, he learned really quick that it wasn't gonna fly because big leaguers pick up on stuff like that. And he had to learn to tunnel his pitches the correct way. He went from there and has evolved into what he is now.”

As a rookie in 2021, Gilbert threw his four-seam fastball 61% of the time, with his slider (24%) the primary secondary weapon, followed by a curveball and traditional changeup that appeared occasionally. Since then, Gilbert’s four-seam usage has steadily declined to the point that he now throws it almost exactly as often (31.5%) as his slider (31.2%), and he has ditched the changeup in favor of a nasty splitter and added a cutter to help against left-handers. After three years of dependable production, this revised arsenal has enabled consistent dominance more in line with that of a legitimate ace, which in turn earned Gilbert his first career All-Star nod in July.

“Logan was at the forefront of the rise of our pitching group. And now he's obviously central to it,” Dipoto said. “He, in so many ways, embodied what we wanted in our pitchers.”

'It's two different people'

Raleigh’s transition to the big leagues was not quite as smooth. While Gilbert quickly settled into his role in the rotation, Raleigh floundered at the plate in 2021, failing to even remotely replicate the gaudy numbers he produced in Triple-A. Although he stayed in the majors through the end of the season, his playing time waned in September in favor of veteran Tom Murphy, and Raleigh finished the year with a paltry .180/.223/.309 line in 148 plate appearances.

A return to Tacoma seemed plausible to open 2022. Instead, Raleigh made the team out of spring training, only to succumb to a late April demotion after he scuffled at the plate early in the season. A longer Triple-A stint to iron out his offensive woes seemed to be in order, but then Murphy suffered a shoulder injury, prompting a recall of Raleigh just a week later. Development be damned; it was suddenly sink or swim in the big leagues.

“Murphy gets hurt, and now they have no choice but to recall him,” Mariners broadcaster Aaron Goldsmith recalled. “There's no way, in that period of time, he has fixed the flaws that got him demoted to Triple-A. They're just like, ‘Hey, you're our only option. Come on back. Sorry — figure it out.’

“And he did.”

Goldsmith looks back at one singular swing as the moment it all started to click.

“The turning point for him in every facet was his home run at the Mets,” he said. “That Citi Field home run is the absolute line of demarcation in Cal's career.”

About a week after returning to the big leagues, Raleigh strolled to the plate in the sixth inning of a tie game with a batting average of .061 to his name. With two outs and a runner on first, he cranked a titanic, go-ahead blast that nearly reached the Shea Bridge in right-center field.

“You look at Cal Raleigh before that home run and Cal Raleigh after that home run — it’s two different people,” Goldsmith said.

Since that decisive swing in Queens, Raleigh and his 82 home runs lead all catchers by a massive margin; Salvador Perez is second with 61 in that span. All the while, Raleigh has managed a pitching staff that has developed into one of the game’s best, playing through numerous bumps and bruises to amass a staggering workload for a catcher of his offensive prowess; only J.T. Realmuto has caught more innings over the past three regular seasons. And with a sterling ability to frame pitches and control the running game, the sum of Raleigh’s contributions has been nearly unmatched among backstops across the league. Since his recall in May 2022, he ranks second among catchers in fWAR, behind only Adley Rutschman.

In retrospect, Goldsmith considers that sequence early in Raleigh’s career to be an awfully intriguing sliding-doors moment: “If not for Tom Murphy's injury, who knows how that season goes for Cal? How long is he down in Triple-A?”

For the Mariners, such an alternate timeline is best left to harmless pondering. What matters is what really happened: Raleigh seized the opportunity and never looked back, and his development into one of baseball’s best all-around catchers has been pivotal to Seattle’s collective success. This year, not only is he on track to lead all major-league catchers in home runs for the third season in a row, but he also leads all catchers in fWAR in 2024, and his two homers against the Mets on Sunday Night Baseball made him the first catcher since Mike Piazza with 25-plus home runs in three consecutive seasons.

‘It doesn't matter — just get better’

Having a catcher contribute significantly on offense is something of a luxury, considering the low bar for hitters at the position, but the value Raleigh brings to the club defensively on a daily basis cannot be overstated, especially for a team so reliant on its pitching staff to win games.

“This team is not even close to what we are without him,” Gilbert said.

“When you think about a catcher, he's kind of your defensive coordinator,” McKay said. “He's putting the fingers down about 150 times a night, and so his involvement in winning and losing is paramount.”

Learning the art of pitch-calling — and the confidence to apply it in big-league games with a wide range of pitchers — is no small task. And while Raleigh had worked with Gilbert since A-ball, he started from square one building trust with the rest of the Mariners’ rotation.

“I don't really know any catchers that are going to walk right in on Day 1 and start telling veteran pitchers, ‘Here's what you need to do more of,’” Servais said. “I think Cal went about it the right way.”

By now, Raleigh is so in tune with each pitcher’s strengths and weaknesses that the staff rarely deviates from his plans throughout a game. Plus, Raleigh has devised creative ways to ensure that his pitchers don’t go off-script.

“The biggest problem is the pitch clock because you can't shake through everything,” Gilbert explained. “We give Cal some flak sometimes because he might think about the pitch for 10 seconds and then give it to us with five seconds left [on the clock]. And I'll joke around with him that he does that because now we don't have an option to shake them off — we have to throw exactly what he wants us to.”

In his defense, Raleigh tends to have the right pitch in mind. Gilbert was reminded of that in his most recent start, when he allowed a sharp single to Francisco Lindor the one time he shook off his catcher in a brilliant outing Saturday against the Mets. It was Gilbert’s fifth start of the season in which he went seven scoreless innings, the most such starts of any MLB pitcher. Gilbert accounts for 19 of Seattle’s MLB-leading 71 quality starts this season, which ties him with Corbin Burnes for the most in baseball. After he allowed just three hits and one walk vs. New York, Gilbert’s WHIP dropped to 0.873, best among qualified starters.

And yet: “I still don't think Logan has reached his ceiling,” Servais said.

“I think Logan is kind of the epitome of what I talk about all the time with our team: It doesn't matter — just get better. Yeah, Logan's really good, but to him, it doesn't matter. He’s just going to focus on getting better. He's the poster child for it for me.”

Said McKay: "These two are going to continue to evolve their game. And that's where so much of their confidence comes from: They know they put in the work. They know how prepared they are, and it makes us confident in them.”

Although they’re still just 27 years old, Gilbert and Raleigh, two of Seattle’s longest-tenured homegrown players, have already accomplished a lot alongside each other. Ending the dreaded postseason drought was quite an achievement so early in their careers, but the duo still have lofty expectations for what’s ahead. The same drive they exhibited while winning California League games five years ago is now on display at the highest level — and with far greater stakes. The Mariners remain neck-and-neck with Houston atop the AL West as Seattle seeks its first division title since 2001.

"Having been around a lot of players through the years and played with a lot of guys, you run across teammates who just trust each other and belong together,” Dipoto said.

“And that's these two guys.”