The Best of Both (Sides)

A ballplayer has all kinds of entry points that beckon for organization:  age, league, experience, team affiliation, and – so integral to whatever sort of classifying is at hand – position and what real estate he occupies when batting.  The greatest teenage seasons, the most productive debut or final seasons, the most accomplished seasons in the AL or NL or from a Tiger or Cub, an Angel or Padre, an Oriole or Blue Jay, a National or Royal.  The invitations to sort and order and list and discuss and debate are – thanks to extraordinary record-keeping and scholarship – part of the essential framework of the game itself, the foundations on which the legends, obscurities, lore and narratives rest.  

With about six weeks in the 2025 regular season still furled, Cal Raleigh’s potentially historic home run season can (and will) be framed within all sorts of casings – Mariners annals, for example, and it’s undoubtedly intriguing to consider the 2025 AL All-Star starter’s current big fly production in light of the substantial work that Ken Griffey, Jr. or Álex Rodríguez or Jay Buhner or Nelson Cruz showcased in Seattle.  But here, I want to return to the last two lenses offered in the introduction and peer at Raleigh as both a catcher and a switch-hitter while trotting down a path away from longballs.  

Through 2024, the Modern Era has witnessed 68 individual switch-hitter seasons which have produced, by Baseball Reference’s reckoning, a 6.0 oWAR or better.  That’s 68 campaigns across nearly a century and a quarter, a fairly uncommon level of production.  Those exceptional offensive years are divvied up among 33 players, with Mickey Mantle (11) and Chipper Jones (6) accounting for a quarter of the 68 all by themselves.  

This same span of seasons has emerged with only 34 total examples of a catcher (at least 50% of a player’s games behind the plate) posting an oWAR of at least 6.0, and, similar to the organization for the switch-hitters (but not as dramatically), a few batters claim a significant percentage of the total number, with Mike Piazza (5) and Johnny Bench (3) and Joe Mauer (3) combining for just about a third of the entire yield.

These two infrequent outcomes can then be twined in Raleigh – the switch-hitting backstop who currently owns a 5.9 oWAR – to create a shape in the form of a question mark and arrow pointing toward the past:  what’s the best a switch-hitter has manufactured at each and every position/role in the game (since 1901)?

The exploration should start in center field, for Mantle – 20-time All-Star, three-time MVP, first-ballot Hall of Famer – casts an immense shadow over all the other batters who have tried to combat all the pitchers’ leverage through an insistence on maintaining the platoon advantage.  Mantle owns the five best seasons by oWAR for any switch-hitter, apexing with the only three campaigns boasting double-digits; this includes a career-best 11.3 in 1957 when the 25-year-old claimed his second consecutive MVP.  Okay, center field is handled*, let’s now jump into the infield.  

The two corner bags are much murkier than the circumstances in center, as there are ties at both first and third.  At the hot corner, Howard Johnson (1989) and Chipper Jones (exactly a decade later) share top honors with an 8.0 (tied for the sixth-best mark for any switch-hitter, after Mantle’s quintet).  Across the diamond, Ripper Collins (1934) and Eddie Murray (exactly a half-century later) are tied with a 6.1.  

The keystone combo offers Roberto Alomar (7.7 in 2001) at second and Francisco Lindor (6.8 in 2024) at short.  

Flanking Mantle:  left fielder Lance Berkman with a 6.9 in 2001 and right fielder Pete Rose, due to his 7.1 in 1969.  

For what it’s worth, the best a DH has done is a 5.9, provided by Victor Martinez in 2014.  And if our imaginary, dream switch-hitting team has to play by the old rules and allow the pitcher to take his place in the box(es), Robin Roberts, with his 1.6 in 1955, carries the day.  

All that’s left is the offensive work for those behind the dish, and here, we find, Raleigh still needs a little bit of productivity over the final six weeks to plant his flag in the starting lineup.  Right now, Raleigh’s 5.9 is tied for the third-highest value, matched with Ted Simmons’ 5.9 in 1975 and stuck behind a pair of Jorge Posada exhibitions:  a 6.1 in 2003 and his claim to preeminence, a 6.6 in 2007.  

So there’s the best, a fairly consistent arrangement where nearly every decade since the 1930s is represented, only the 1940s (where left fielder Augie Galan’s 6.6 in 1944 is the best mark) and the 1970s (right fielder Ken Singleton’s 6.8 in 1977 is the highest anyone rose) fall short of personification in the starting lineup.  Might our current decade submit a pair, a Raleigh to unite with a Lindor?

Raleigh’s 2025 season has a chance to carve a rich notation in the book of baseball.  He’s within distance of hitting more home runs than any other catcher, with maybe the first 50-bomb effort from a backstop in play.  He won’t, almost certainly, get to Mike Piazza’s 9.0 oWAR in 1997 to master that category.  But perhaps the best OPS+ ever for an AL/NL backstop is (maybe?) in reach, pitting Raleigh’s ability to shrug aside the rigors of an ongoing season against the apex levels produced by Piazza, Mauer and Buster Posey.  Maybe there’s even enough magic in his career campaign to produce three more multi-home run games and tie Hank Greenberg (1938), Sammy Sosa (1998) and Aaron Judge (2022) for the most ever for a season, regardless of position or any of the other variables mentioned at the top – just full-on stop, the most ever.  

*With Mantle and Bernie Williams, Yankees center fielders own 12 of the best 16 oWAR seasons for a switch-hitter at the position.  The four other top-shelfers:  the Expos’ Tim Raines, the Cardinals’ Willie McGee, the Mets’ Carlos Beltrán and the Diamondbacks’ Ketel Marte. 

Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.