While the Seattle Mariners’ offense in general is off to a slow start, there’s one hitter whose production so far has been very encouraging, especially when you consider how his 2025 campaign went.
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Outfielder Luke Raley enters Wednesday with a .296 batting average, .356 on-base percentage and .556 slugging percentage for a .911 OPS, and his three home runs in 16 games are already just one shy of how many he had in 73 games during an injury-hampered season last year.
The 31-year-old Raley has looked a lot more like the player who had 22 home runs and a .783 OPS in 2024 for the Mariners than the one who struggled to stay on the field – and produce when he was – in 2025. But as Mariners insider Shannon Drayer of Seattle Sports explained, Raley has made some changes rather than attempting to recreate what made him successful two seasons ago.
“Every player hits that mark where you get into that point in your late 20s where things are a little bit different for you,” Drayer said Tuesday during The Dugout on Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy. “In the offseason, he realized that he was probably training too hard with the weights and he needed more flexibility. So he got into the yoga and now the first thing that he does before he does anything else, it is the stretching, it is the yoga, it’s taking care of the body that way before he hits the weights. And I think that that’s helping him feel better out on the field a little bit.”
There also seems to be a shift in mentality for Raley, who can be hard on himself at times.
“You don’t see many in baseball attack the game the way that he does. And that’s how he has to play, it’s how he does play,” Drayer said. “It’s how he got to that ball in the ninth inning (for a catch at the wall in the ninth inning Monday against the Astros). It’s how he can hit a ball over a fence and beat out a bunt and get to first base and scare everybody who’s in the way in the process. I think it’s absolutely fantastic. That’s who he is.
“I’ve talked a little bit about it, but with Luke – I mean, they all care, they all care a lot. But if you had to have a care meter, he would be at the absolute top of it, almost sometimes to his detriment. For him, I think he is probably the one that it is toughest to put a bad game behind him. He wears it more when things aren’t going right.”
Raley is making an effort to allow himself more fun when on the field, Drayer said.
“He’s also said that – going back to his passion for the game and really holding on to things – (he) needs to have more fun out there, and he’s trying to make that commitment and trying to be conscious of that. And he, of course, became a first-time dad last year, and that is helping things too a little bit with him.”
That isn’t stopping the 6-foot-3, 235-pound Raley from still being the hard-working player his Mariners teammates are familiar with.
“It’s just the player that he is, and it helps the team not only in the results that he puts up on the field, but he’s one of those energy guys,” Drayer said. “You don’t usually think the energy guy is going to be one of the biggest guys on the field, but in this case, it is. And the teammates feed off of that stuff, much like they do off of some of the things that Josh Naylor does.”
Catch The Dugout, a weekly hour of Mariners talk and interviews, at 1 p.m. each Tuesday during the baseball season on Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy. Hear the full conversation with Drayer in the podcast of this week’s edition of The Dugout at this link or in the player below.
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