When Cal Raleigh steps to the plate at T-Mobile Park for these final few weeks of the 2026 season, Mariners fans might be surprised to hear a different walkup song for their catcher. Raleigh has long favored Washington-born Zach Top’s “Bad Luck”, which he’d been using since last season, but also has a taste for the classics: he’s used Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight,” Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing,” and back in the minors, the original Beef Boy Ballad, “Drift Away.”
Classic heavy metal? Not
so much.
Except sharp-eared fans might have recently heard Raleigh walking up to “The Trooper” by Iron Maiden, arguably the second-most famous piece of literary art about the Charge of the Light Brigade. Frustrated with his season and open to changing up anything, Raleigh has been trying out different walk-up songs over the past few months – the less said about the use of Martina McBride’s “Independence Day” over the July Fourth homestand, the better – eventually allowing the Mariners’ clubhouse managers and attendants to take a turn picking out songs for him. Clubhouse attendant Tim Kalal, a devout Iron Maiden fan, selected “The Trooper” prior to a game against the Phillies on August 24th. Cal went on to hit three homers in the game and hasn’t looked back since.
It’s a fitting tune for Raleigh, who has probably felt like he’s been in Tennyson’s Valley of Death during 2026. However, there are signs he’s been starting clambering off the gob pile that has been his season. Cal points to a mid-August series in Milwaukee where he instituted a mechanical change as a turnaround in his season. Small sample size ahoy, but since the beginning of that series, Raleigh has a wRC+ of 259 . He’s hit eight home runs over that span, which is one fewer than the number he hit from the beginning of the season to the fourth of July; more importantly, he’s walking much more (19%) and striking out much less (26%) than he’s been this season. He’s also squaring the ball up better, with a barrel rate of over 30% (MLB average is around 8%) and a hard-hit rate of 64.5% (MLB average is 22%).
Part of Raleigh’s adjustments have been getting his hands into better position; they’re a little higher and a little further back. Per Cal, this allows him to be better on-time to get off his good swing, which would contribute to the uptick in hard-hit numbers.
“It doesn’t take as long to get to my fire position,” said Raleigh, noting the new setup has helped him get to that position earlier. “So I don’t have to worry about getting back on time. There’s less room for error. So just being a little higher, a little more back, I’m a little more in that position where I fire from.”
Here he is in that “fire position” in his second home run against Wheeler on August 24th vs. where he was on May 12 (where he broke an 0-for-38 with a single) in Houston. His hands are higher, but really he’s more upright overall, with those classic high elbows that are an Edgar hallmark. His hips are also slightly more open.
Raleigh describes the change as a collective effort among the hitting group.
“You know, Edgar is a big proponent of it, he always has been. He’s big on getting your hands back and getting that separation beforehand so you don’t have to worry about maybe not getting back or not getting on time.”
Compare again to Raleigh in late June, where he’s much more closed at a similar point – you can see even more of his numbers than in the still from May – and his hands are closer to his body with a more perpendicular angle to his lead elbow. You can also see how much stronger Raleigh is to his back leg in August, with a more balanced weight distribution, as opposed to May-June, when he almost seems tipped forward some.
But the primary thing the new setup has given him is his timing back. While his attack angle hasn’t changed, you can see from Raleigh’s swing tracking data that in 2026, he’s often been later on the fastball, which has resulted in him getting under the pitch more, which has in turn resulted in a lot of flyballs that haven’t left the park. While it would be difficult for Raleigh to have repeated his 25% HR/FB ratio from last year ( at those rates, think Schwarber/Caminero/Alonso), this year that number has fallen to a career-low 14.5% (think Miguel Vargas, JJ Bleday, Zach Neto) – still high average, no longer elite.
“I don’t have to go searching or be on perfect timing every time,” said Raleigh. “I can have more room for error for being on time for the fastball and then a little more back on the off-speed.”
One thing that has been consistent for Raleigh all season is his ability to take a walk; even at his worst points, when he was expanding up or chasing out of the zone and striking out consistently, he still ran an above-average walk rate, managing to wring some value out of his plate appearances. But in this mid-August stretch until now, not only is he walking almost 20% of the time, but he’s getting himself into advantage counts and actually doing damage in those counts. Raleigh said he started to feel things shifting in his favor earlier; the mechanical adjustment just helped him unlock the ability to punish mistakes.
“I felt like I was seeing the ball better. I was laying off pitches, I was doing all that stuff. It was just about the execution of it. Now when I was getting the mistake, I was actually taking advantage of it. So I think that’s the difference. Beforehand, I was seeing the ball a lot better and doing a better job of recognizing and stuff like that, but still not getting the execution part through.”
So the two improvements have gone hand-in-hand: Raleigh is doing more damage on the pitches he’s seeing now thanks to the mechanical tweak, but he’s able to get those pitches to damage because of his improved plate discipline and ability to dictate the at-bat – something that can build throughout the game.
“You always want to be on the attack, and if it’s not [the pitch you want], you’re getting another pitch out of them. It might not show up in that first at-bat but maybe you saw that one pitch one extra time, or he had to use all four pitches on you instead of only two or three, and I think it shows up—maybe not in that at-bat, but it shows up in the next one. You recognize it and you get even more good counts, and you do that more often and you can square something up. So it’s that trickle-down effect, like if it’s not immediate, maybe it’s the next time through. It’s just much better when you’re in the driver’s seat. You have a little more freedom. You have a little more ability to be like, what’s my plan here, what am I going to try to do to get that swing off, instead of trying to play defense up there.”
Cal claims not to be an Iron Maiden fan, but the battle metaphor is appropriate for both baseball and the unnamed protagonist of “The Trooper,”
You’ll take my life, but I’ll take yours too
You’ll fire your musket, but I’ll run you through
So when you’re waiting for the next attack
You’d better stand, there’s no turning back
“To me, a typical season is like, 10% of the time you’re hot, super hot, you can’t get out. 10% of the time, you’re awful. You can’t do anything. Then there’s that 80% where you’re fighting, battling. Maybe not good, maybe not bad. Right in the middle. And that’s when you’re trying to fine tune things a little bit and make sure you’re on top of everything.”
At this point it would take a Herculean effort to push Raleigh’s 2026 campaign even towards “right in the middle” – not that that’s stopping him from fighting, battling. The Light Brigade soldier goes into battle knowing he won’t live to fight another day; fighting anyway, plunging on into certain death. It’s too late to save Cal Raleigh’s 2026 season, just like it’s too late to save the Mariners’ 2026 season. But Raleigh’s determination to fight on and finish as strongly as he can, to make those adjustments, to find a way out of the valley is a testament to the kind of player and person he is: in every sense, a Trooper.
