That Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh was among the finalists announced Tuesday morning for an American League Gold Glove Award should be no surprise for those who follow the defensive numbers.

Two Mariners named AL Gold Glove Award finalists

Raleigh in season and out has gone to great lengths to improve his defense, and the results show in both the eye and Statcast tests. How he got to the top was the result of multiple things – from the initiative he took in working this past offseason with Cleveland Guardians catcher Austin Hedges, who posted the best pitch framing numbers in the American League in 2023, to using (and ultimately taking) his resources in the Mariners clubhouse in 2024 when a problem arose. The latter comes via a story shared with Aaron Goldsmith and Gary Hill in a favorite Mariners Radio Network pregame show interview from this past season.

The problem? Raleigh’s glove-hand middle finger was taking a beating.

“Pitches, foul tips, blocking balls where I turned over and my finger would be exposed, I kept getting hit and hit in the same spot. And I’m like, ‘I gotta do something different cause the padding’s not working. The glove’s not working,’” Raleigh remembered.

Raleigh, who was also a Gold Glove finalist in 2022, sought out the advice of other catchers in and around the team and was told there was a simple fix. He needed to get a bigger glove to give himself more space to catch the ball.

“With the glove I was using, I couldn’t shift my hand to the left to give myself more room to catch when it’s not hitting the fingers,” he explained. “Normally when you put your hand in a glove, it goes in straight in and there’s like a slot for each finger. Now I shifted my hand over to where I’ve got three fingers where the pinky goes.”

While his glove wouldn’t allow him to get the fingers out of harm’s way, there was one glove found in the Mariners clubhouse that did. That glove belonged to Seby Zavala.

“It gave me more room to get hit in more places like the palm, where it doesn’t really hurt as much or just not hitting anything,” he said.

Raleigh was sold on the glove, but acquiring a broken-in, game-ready duplicate was just not possible in season. It was Zavala’s original, or nothing at all.

“I unfortunately took his glove. I ended up keeping it,” Raleigh said with a sheepish chuckle. “It was working so well. I’m like, ‘Hey, my hand feels so much better. My finger’s doing a lot better.”

The glove switch did not go unnoticed. The black and silver of Zavala’s previous team, the Chicago White Sox, was not a natural fit with Mariners’ teal. The No. 44 embroidered on the outside of the glove prompted questions.

“‘You have 44 on your glove. Is it for it for Julio?’”  I’m like. No, It’s Seby’s old glove,” Raleigh said. “I got him a nice gift for it. I was like, ‘I feel bad for taking your glove, but I need it. I really need it and I don’t have time to break into another one.’”

A No. 1 catcher has got to do what a No. 1 catcher has got to do. As a result, if Raleigh wins the Gold Glove, he will have done it with Zavala’s glove.

“That’s going to be kind of a funny story if that happens,” he said.

If Raleigh wins the Gold Glove, his glove forevermore will be adorned not by the red Rawlings nameplate on all but a precious few, but rather the gold version reserved for the award winners. What his gloves of the future will not have on them, though, is Zavala’s old No. 44.

“The Rawlings guy came the other day and I told him, ‘Hey, this is the glove I want. We’re switching it up.’ This is the glove and it’ll be mine. I’ll have my number and it’ll be mine so I won’t have to steal it from anybody hopefully.”

Seattle Mariners’ Cal Raleigh sets two HR records with one swing

Not wanting to jinx himself, Raleigh was hesitant to talk about possibly taking the award, but he stressed that what is covered by the award is just one piece of what he feels it takes to be at the top of one’s game at catcher.

“It’s hard to win that award and I think it’d be really amazing,” he said. “Obviously you want to be the best of your position at what you do, but to me, more importantly is making sure that you got to do the things that aren’t kind of seen on the field. You’ve got to do the things away from it. Take care of your pitchers, game planning, calling games, running the show. That’s kind of the thing that people don’t really see sometimes when they do the Gold Glove because you’re looking at certain things like throwing out runners.

“You know the actual stats and metrics and all that stuff, which is great because you want to be the best at that as well, but you also want to be known around the league as the guy who knows how to run a staff and win games and do stuff like that. So that’s probably the No. 1 priority.”

The Gold Glove Award winners will be announced Nov. 3.

Listen to the full Seattle Mariners radio pregame conversation with Cal Raleigh in the podcast at this link or in the player near the top of this post.

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