4 Reasons Why Mariners' Cal Raleigh is the 2025 AL MVP Over Yankees' Aaron Judge

Aaron Judge didn't have even one MVP at this time in 2022, so the likelihood that he could have three by the end of this year is a remarkable feat by a remarkable player.

The odds are against it, however at +180.

This is a fact, at least according to DraftKings. Their favorite for the American League MVP is Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh at -220, which is a cue for New York Yankees fans to line up their standard talking points:

• Judge leads MLB with a .330 AVG, .457 OBP, .683 SLG and 1.140 OPS
• He also leads with 9.2 rWAR and 9.8 fWAR
• The Yankees have already made the playoffs and could win the AL East
• Therefore, Judge is the rightful AL MVP

These are valid across the board. And for what it's worth, ESPN's Jeff Passan passed along word that most of the players believe Judge is the right pick for AL MVP.

Yet, we can give you four reasons why Big Dumper himself should be the AL MVP.

Reason 1: The Best AL Power-Hitting Season Ever (No, Really)

Have you heard that Raleigh has hit 60 home runs? He still has three games to break Judge's American League record of 62.

As it is, Raleigh is the seventh hitter to reach the 60-homer threshold, and has four notable broken records under his belt:

Home Runs as a Catcher: 49, over Javy Lopez's 42 from 2003
Home Runs as a Primary Catcher: 60, over Salvador Perez's 48 from 2001
Home Runs as a Switch-Hitter: 60, over Mickey Mantle's 54 from 1961
Home Runs as a Mariner: 60, over Ken Griffey Jr.'s 56 from 1997 and 1998

To use a technical term, this is bonkers stuff. And it's not as if Raleigh has benefited from a plethora of advantages, which is indeed the opposite of his reality.

Performance-enhancing drugs? Nope. So far as we know, even his world-renowned badonkadonk is natty. 

A power-friendly position? No way. Catchers are only slugging .394 this year, the second-lowest of any position except for second base.

A power-friendly ballpark? Yeah, right. T-Mobile Park is the anti-dong, barely ranking within the top 20 as a home run haven.

Repetition? If you're talking about frequent matchups with individual pitchers, you can get out of here with this one, too. Because of the balanced schedule, Raleigh has faced 290 different hurlers, and not one of them more than 10 times.

Many of these same points played into our determination that Judge accomplished the best home run-hitting season in history back in 2022. And yet, even that year pales in comparison to the year Raleigh has had.

Put Raleigh's 2025 season and Judge's 2022 season into neutral environments, and you get 65 homers for the former and 64 homers for the latter.

Reason 2: Yes, Defense Actually Matters

This is not meant as a knock on Judge, though he isn't so much a right fielder as a "right fielder."

Judge has split his starts between 92 games in right field and 56 games at designated hitter. And given the state of his right arm, he would probably be DH'ing full-time right now if the Yankees didn't need to preserve what's left of Giancarlo Stanton.

There's no need to put quotation marks around the word "catcher" when talking about Raleigh. He truly is a catcher, as his 36 games at DH come paired with an AL-high 120 games behind the plate.

Per the conventional wisdom that catcher is the most important defensive position on the diamond, this gives Raleigh bragging rights if nothing else. But there is something else: He's actually at his job.

In fact, no member of the 60-homer club has ever had this much defensive value:

• Cal Raleigh, 2025: 16.4
• Babe Ruth, 1927: 5.5
• Aaron Judge, 2022: -0.6
• Sammy Sosa, 2001: -1.1
• Sammy Sosa, 1998: -4.0
• Sammy Sosa, 1999: -5.9
• Roger Maris, 1961: -6.9
• Barry Bonds, 2001: -12.0
• Mark McGwire, 1999: -17.6
• Mark McGwire, 1998: -25.1

Raleigh isn't going to win the Platinum Glove for a second straight year, but he still ranks among the better throwers and framers among catchers. It's a lot harder (i.e., basically impossible) to quantify how he handles his pitchers, but he's only ever gotten high marks in that regard.

Reason 3: The Narrative Should Matter, Too

I know we're not supposed to talk about The Narrative in MVP discussions anymore, but...well, can we? Just this once? As a treat?

Even if there's no denying Judge's excellence, it isn't a case of reality overshooting expectations. He's set his standards so high that even this year is only his third-best season after 2022 and 2024. Meanwhile, the Yankees aren't going to win more games than they won in either of those years.

Compare this to Raleigh, who's like a lightning bolt catching a ride on a rocket ship.

He was a good major leaguer before this year, notably leading catchers in homers in each of the three previous seasons. But he had never so much as been an All-Star, and his average home run total was right around 30.

To literally double that from one season to the next had never been done before, and he sure picked a heck of a team and a heck of a town to do it for.

The Yankees? They're in the playoffs every year, and may win their 22nd AL East title. They own their expectations, both in the sense that they spend a ton of money and they're always shoving their history down people's throats—hey, you would too if you were 27-time World Series champions.

The Mariners? They love them in the Pacific Northwest, but the franchise itself is the antithesis of an anxiety blanket. The Mariners have yet to go to the World Series since their berth in 1977, and this year's AL West title is their first since the legendary 116-win club of 2001. That was nearly a quarter-century ago.

What Judge has done is throw a bone to a fanbase that expects to be fed. What Raleigh has done is throw one to a fanbase that is always on the brink of starvation.

Reason 4: Can We Please Try Something Different?

Granted, all of this is a blatant attempt to run an end-around past the brick wall in Raleigh's MVP candidacy: The fact that Judge is statistically more valuable.

Judge only has a 0.8 fWAR edge on Raleigh, but his rWAR edge is a whopping 2.0. Average those out, and you get close to the same difference between Judge and Bobby Witt Jr. last year, for which Judge was the unanimous AL MVP.

So it goes. WAR and MVP voting have become strongly correlated in recent years, and it's hard to fault the voters. When you're trying to suss out value and there's a stat right there that purports to have an objective measure of it, why not trust it?

Yet given just how strong the correlation has become, it's fair to suspect that groupthink has taken hold of the BBWAA voting bloc. Which is a problem, because the organization's MVP voting guidelines clearly state: "There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team."

This should be a license to get subjective. It should be a license to consider not just stats, but vibes.

And in this race, Raleigh is the vibes candidate. He's the one having an unforgettable season for a team that will be remembered, whereas the year Judge and the Yankees are having is practically manufactured for the "So, That Happened" file.

Do the right thing, voters. Vote Dumper and don't look back.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.