The next homegrown star extension: Cal Raleigh?

Do the Mariners commit to their homegrown catcher for the next decade?

On Thursday, amidst the MVP hoopla and Tampa stadium drama, there was one simple Tweet that may have escaped your attention:

For those of you who don’t have an encyclopedic memory of the Mariners’ various agents, Cal Raleigh was previously associated with Scott Boras; their connection dated all the way back to Raleigh’s time at FSU.

Of course, players switch agents all the time. Sometimes, it’s to make a splash, a la Robinson Canó going from Boras to Jay-Z. Sometimes, it’s because of a “butchered” free agency, which we saw just last offseason. Sometimes, it has nothing to do with any of that! Why does anybody switch realtors, or financial advisors, or mechanics? The list of potential reasons is too long to count.

But the timing here is unambiguously curious. For the first time as a pro, Raleigh heads into this offseason without a fixed salary for the year ahead, making a need for an agent that much more acute. As a first-year arbitration-eligible player with over three years of MLB service time, the Mariners’ cornerstone catcher is no longer subject to the major league minimum of $740,000. He’ll be getting a nice little raise — MLB Trade Rumors, which publishes arb projections every year across the league, pegs him at $5.6m.

Additionally, Boras is known for his ability to squeeze every last dollar for his clients. He encourages players to hit free agency and eschew early extensions. Juan Soto turned down a $440m extension from the Nationals back in 2022, and that snub precipitated a trade from the Nats to the Padres. Two years later, Soto is free to sign with any team in the league, and likely to receive a guarantee well in excess of that $440m figure. Boras’s approach goes back decades; perhaps you remember when he put together a binder touting Alex Rodríguez’s exploits back in 2000?

Back to the matter at hand, the million-dollar questions are: Does this mean Cal Raleigh is more likely to sign a long-term deal with the Mariners? And if he did, what would such a deal look like?

I have no clue about that first question. It’s certainly not a bad sign that Raleigh switched representation, but it could also mean nothing.

The second question, though, is something we can sketch out. Let’s get into it!

Why would each side want a deal?

The Mariners have consistently expressed reticence when it comes to free agency. In his near-decade with the M’s, Jerry Dipoto has signed just eight free agents to multi-year contracts, with only Robbie Ray and Yusei Kikuchi getting 3+. Furthermore, they’ve explicitly said they don’t want to sign players on the wrong end of the aging curve. John Stanton said as much before Opening Day:

“[I]t’s easy to say, look across the dugout, and hire a $300 or $400 million free agent, with the knowledge that you’re gonna get a couple of good years, and then you will have mortgaged your future for a player that may be in his late 30s or early 40s and not be able to perform at the same level. I want to have players that are going to be in their prime and playing for the Seattle Mariners and helping us achieve that goal of being a playoff team year after year.”

What better way to avoid that than to sign players before they reach free agency? We’ve seen them do this with J.P. Crawford (pretty good!), Evan White (whoops!), and Julio Rodríguez (heck yeah!), among others.

It’s worth noting that Cal plays catcher, a notoriously demanding position with an aging curve that may scare teams away in free agency. Perhaps the Mariners will be reticent to give him a long-term deal given that risk. For Cal, however, this serves as a chance for him to secure generational wealth — making $740k each year will certainly pay the bills, but tens of millions of dollars will pay your kids’ bills, and probably even their kids’ bills. My risk tolerance would lead me to accept something like that, but perhaps I’m just built different.

There is one extra wrinkle in the timing of an extension: These contracts are often based on previous deals handed to comparable players. In fact, that’s exactly how arbitration works. This offseason, PNW-born Adley Rutschman is also arb-eligible for the first time, and any contract that Rutschman signs would be used as a baseline for a Raleigh deal, too. Rutschman has more hardware (two All-Star nods and a Silver Slugger, compared to a Gold Glove and a Platinum Glove for Raleigh), but Raleigh’s 2024 was arguably better (by both fWAR and bWAR). The Mariners would be incentivized to sign Raleigh before a Rutschman deal that could set the floor; conversely, Raleigh might want to wait until after that deal is inked. We see this all the time in the NFL, where each new quarterback contract sets a new record. Get in early, and you somehow have Patrick Mahomes as the 11th-highest paid QB in the league.

What precedent is there for such a deal?

I’m glad you asked! There are a couple recent contracts that give us an idea of what this could look like:

Will Smith

Last March, heading into his age-29 season and his second year of arbitration, Smith signed a 10-year, $140m contract with the Dodgers. This deal came after his first All-Star nod and his third-straight 3-win season. Raleigh turns 28 on Tuesday, and while this is his first year of arbitration (meaning he’s a little bit further away from free agency, and has a lower starting salary), it’s also his third consecutive 3-win season. Additionally, Raleigh’s 2024, where he hit .220/.312/.436 and won the award for the best defensive player in the AL, is better than any single season that Smith has put up.

Smith’s contract came after playing on a $5.25m deal in 2023 and after the two sides avoided arbitration in 2024 with a record $8.55m contract (the most ever given to a second-year eligible catcher). As True Blue LA pointed out when that one-year pact was announced, that record is due in part to recent star catchers either breaking out late (J.T. Realmuto) or signing extensions before getting deep in arb (Buster Posey, and Salvador Pérez’s infamous club-friendly deal).

While that $140m number is eye-popping, similar to Shohei Ohtani’s deal, much of that money is deferred to a later date. As a result, the net present value (NPV) is about $122m. It was structured so that Smith received a $30m signing bonus, $13.55m in 2024, $13m for each of the next three years, $9.5m for the next five, and then $9.95m in 2033, with $5m deferred each season until 2034–2043.

Sean Murphy

Sean Murphy wasn’t quite a franchise cornerstone when the Atlanta Braves extended him; in fact, he’d only been on the roster for two weeks. But as the Braves are wont to do, they added Murphy to a long list of stars with long-term deals (Ronald Acuña Jr., Michael Harris II, Matt Olson, Ozzie Albies, Spencer Strider, and Austin Riley).

At the point when Murphy signed, he had a similar peak as Raleigh (coming off of a 3.6 bWAR season and a year after he won his first Gold Glove) and the same age (about to start his age-28 season). But he had a shorter track record, with just 8.0 career bWAR compared to Raleigh’s 11.3. Raleigh tops him on Fangraphs as well, with 13.9 fWAR vs. 10.5 for Murphy.

Murphy’s deal covered all three arbitration seasons ($4m, $9m, $15m) and three free agent seasons at $15m apiece. There’s also a club option for $13m in 2029.

Compared to Smith’s deal, yet again, one would think the Braves can’t keep getting away with this. Smith had a longer track record, yes, but came into his deal one year older and a similar best season as Murphy. Smith should retire on his current deal — it runs through his 38th birthday — while Murphy will hit free agency at age 35, which isn’t exactly peak years for such a physically demanding position.

Buster Posey or Joe Mauer?

I’m choosing to ignore the Buster Posey and Joe Mauer contracts for a few reasons. For one, they were signed a while ago, so they’re simply less relevant to how the current market values catchers. More importantly, Raleigh has been great but hasn’t been at the level of those two stars. Mauer had won an MVP, three batting titles, two Gold Gloves, and three Silver Sluggers before signing his $184m extension across his free agent years. Posey had an MVP, a Rookie of the Year award, two World Series titles, and three years of 5+ WAR pace. So while Posey ended up at 8 years for $167m (through arbitration and five free agent years), I just don’t think Raleigh can justify that level of contract given the other, more recent comparisons.

What would a deal look like?

Will Smith’s arb years are a great place to start: $5.25m in year one (unsurprisingly similar to Raleigh’s projected figure of $5.6m) and $8.55m in year two.

To estimate his arbitration salary in year three, I took a brief look at players with 4-5 years of service time in 2024 (excluding Super Two-eligible players), their performance in 2024, and their projected arb salaries for 2025, their final season before free agency:

As you can see, there’s quite a lot of variable performance! But if we focus on players who did not fall off a cliff, there’s an average of a 36% increase in salary. Using that as our guide, we can extrapolate Cal at $5.6m/$9m/$12.25m for his club control, putting him in line with Smith for those three years. Let’s use some round numbers and call it $6m/$9.5m/$12.5m, getting us to $28m total.

As far as those free agent years, Raleigh will presumably want something between Smith’s deal, Murphy’s deal, and J.T. Realmuto’s deal, which covered his ages 30-34 seasons and included his final year of arbitration + 4 years of free agency. A quick table to compare those, with a caveat that I’m ignoring Smith’s deferrals and spreading his $30m signing bonus across each season of the deal:

Conveniently, all four catchers’ free agent years line up at ages 30 or 31.

The big question for Raleigh will be whether he wants to sign a much longer deal like Smith’s, which would carry a lower average annual value (AAV), or a shorter deal like Realmuto’s or Murphy’s, which could come with a higher AAV but serves as a bet on a significant free agent contract in his mid-30s.

My bet is that both sides end up anchoring between Smith and Realmuto. Raleigh has a better track record than Murphy did at the same age, while Smith had a similar track record and would have hit free agency at the same age as Raleigh. I also don’t think the M’s would want to give Raleigh a 10-year contract; their desire for a low AAV is likely outweighed by the idea of paying for significant downside risk at the back-end of the contract.

Using that as a guide, let’s do some hand-waving and value each FA year as roughly $18m; slightly more than Smith, but without all of the years at the end of the deal. In fact, if you took the last two years of Smith’s contract — when he’s likely to produce little value, given catchers’ historical aging curves — and spread those out among the other FA years, you’d get annual salaries of between $16.75m and $20m. Add a small premium to that, since I’m sure Raleigh would argue that he’s a better player than Smith, and let’s say it’s between $18m and $19m annually.

Given everything above, I’m going to guess this deal ends up covering eight years (and five free agency years). Put it all together and we arrive at a total contract of $120m over eight seasons, with a breakdown like this:

2025 (age 28): $6m
2026 (age 29): $9.5m
2027 (age 30): $12.5m
2028 (age 31): $19m
2029 (age 32): $19m
2030 (age 33): $18m
2031 (age 34): $18m
2032 (age 35): $18m

That feels roughly appropriate for a franchise cornerstone. I could see the Mariners wanting more of a discount, given how much they’re guaranteeing before they get to free agency; I could also see Raleigh trying to index on Realmuto’s contract since he’s been so excellent for the last few years. Perhaps this deal would come in a bit lower, call it $16m a pop for those free agent years, and an eight-year contract would look closer to $100-$110m. Perhaps Raleigh would want a shorter deal with a higher annual value. Or perhaps Cal would take the Will Smith deal and go up to 10 years and almost match his deal exactly (but likely with a cash bump that gets him to $155m).

Dipoto and the Mariners could also get creative, as they did with Julio’s contract. You could add an opt-out that lets Raleigh keep a floor (in case his production craters) but gives him an option to hit free agency for realz. You could add a club option or two at the back-end of the deal to give the Mariners more club control. You could add significant incentives. Or you could do something I haven’t even thought of!

The final caveat I’d give is that I often end up underestimating where these contracts land. Raleigh could well index on and hold out for Realmuto’s $23m AAV, or even the Buster Posey & Joe Mauer deals. He could also capitalize on his increased recognition and use to top any of these contracts. He has no need to sign right now!

Regardless, from an emotional fan perspective (and kinda from a logical fan perspective): Let’s give Big Dumper a dump truck of money.