Cal Raleigh hits first three-homer game of his career as Mariners rout Phillies, end nine-game win streak

Cal Raleigh hit three home runs for the first time in his professional career on Monday night, powering the Seattle Mariners to a 9-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies at T-Mobile Park and snapping Philadelphia's season-best nine-game winning streak.

Raleigh finished 3-for-3 with a walk, pulling all three homers into the right-field seats from the left side of the plate. He drove in a two-run shot off Phillies ace Zack Wheeler in the first inning, added a solo homer off Wheeler in the fifth, and closed the night with another solo shot off reliever Chase Shugart in the seventh. The switch-hitting catcher's season home run total rose to 17, and his batting average climbed from .159 to .167.

A career night, finally

Julio Rodriguez opened the scoring with a three-run homer in the first inning, part of a five-run frame that chased Wheeler from the game before he had recorded an out in the fifth. Cole Young went back-to-back with Raleigh with a solo home run of his own in that inning. By the time Raleigh connected a third time in the seventh, Seattle had turned a marquee pitching matchup into a laugher, and the crowd at T-Mobile Park had watched something that had happened in Mariners history only twelve times before.

Seattle piled up five home runs in all, a rare offensive explosion for a club that has more often relied on pitching and defense to stay in contention this summer. The five-run first inning alone matched what the Mariners had managed in some entire games earlier in the season, and it effectively decided the outcome before Wheeler had thrown 30 pitches.

Raleigh became the 13th player in franchise history to hit three home runs in a single game, and only the second catcher to do it — following current manager Dan Wilson, who accomplished the same feat in April 1996. According to ESPN's game recap, it was also the first three-homer game at any level of baseball that Raleigh has ever played.

"I had never done that before — at any level. So, hard to fathom, and it was a fun night," Raleigh said after the game, according to the Associated Press.

From MVP runner-up to a season-long slump

The outburst arrives as a rare bright spot in what has otherwise been a difficult follow-up season for Raleigh. A year ago he led all of Major League Baseball with 60 home runs and 125 RBIs, a power display that made him the American League MVP runner-up and set a single-season home run record for a catcher. His Statcast profile this year has told a very different story: a batting average that sat below .160 entering Monday's game, well off the pace that made him one of the sport's most feared hitters in 2025. Monday's three-homer game was Raleigh's first multi-homer game of the 2026 season, a sign that had been a long time coming for a hitter whose power has rarely been in question even as his average slipped.

Wheeler and the Phillies pay the price

The loss fell hardest on Wheeler, who came into the night as one of the National League's most reliable starters. He was pulled after allowing eight runs — a season high — on nine hits and five walks over four-plus innings, with four strikeouts. Seattle starter Logan Gilbert was the beneficiary, working five innings and allowing two runs on five hits with five strikeouts to improve to 11-7. J.T. Realmuto's second-inning solo homer was the only real answer the Phillies mustered against him.

For Philadelphia, the defeat ended a nine-game run that had been the club's longest winning streak of the season and had pushed the Phillies toward the top of the National League standings. A single loss does not undo that stretch, but it does close out a stretch of games in which the Phillies had looked close to unbeatable, and it happened against a Mariners team that entered the series firmly in playoff-contention mode rather than as an easy mark.

• Final score: Mariners 9, Phillies 2
• Cal Raleigh: 3-for-3, 3 HR, walk, season total 17 home runs
• Zack Wheeler: 4-plus IP, 8 R (season high), 9 H, 5 BB, 4 K
• Streak snapped: Phillies' nine-game winning streak, their longest of 2026

What the win means for Seattle

The Mariners have spent much of August fighting for position in a crowded American League field. Seattle remained three games behind the division-leading pace in the AL West standings after Monday's win and sits within striking distance of a wild-card berth as the season enters its final stretch. Every game carries added weight at this point in the schedule, and a performance like Raleigh's — from a player who has spent much of the summer under scrutiny for his batting average even as his defensive reputation and clubhouse standing have stayed intact — offers Seattle a jolt of momentum heading into a stretch of games that will shape its playoff chances.

Manager Dan Wilson, who watched from the dugout as Raleigh matched his own long-ago feat, credited the catcher's approach at the plate rather than treating the night as a fluke.

"Finding the barrel more often, taking his walks more often, swinging at better pitches more often. Tonight was just a combination of all of that again," Wilson said, adding that seeing Raleigh do it from the left side "put a smile on all of our faces."

What happens next

The two teams were scheduled to continue their series at T-Mobile Park, with Seattle looking to build on the win and Philadelphia looking to start a new streak rather than dwell on the one that ended. With roughly a month left in the regular season, Seattle's margin for error in both the division and the wild-card chase is thin, and local coverage out of Seattle has framed the stretch run as a genuine, if narrow, opportunity for the Mariners to overtake the division leaders rather than settle for a wild-card berth.

For Raleigh, the immediate question is whether Monday marks a turning point in his batting average or simply a spectacular outlier in an otherwise uneven season. Either way, his power has never been the issue: with 17 home runs already and more than a month of the regular season remaining, a hot finish could still put him back into the middle of the American League's offensive conversation, and back into a Seattle lineup that will need every bit of thump it can get if the Mariners are going to close the gap in both the West and the wild-card race.