​Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez haven’t lived up to their lofty expectations this year, and the Mariners as a team haven’t met theirs either. Opening Day had the Mariners pegged as favorites in the American League by FanGraphs, yet they head into the All-Star break a game under .500. So, what went wrong? The short answer is that the team has underperformed relative to its projections, and most of that underachievement sits with Cal and Julio.
To quantify it, I looked at a four-part breakdown of the roster: Cal and Julio (the stars), the rest of the position players, the starting rotation, and the bullpen. For each group, I added up 2025 WAR, 2026 projected WAR, and 2026 actual WAR, prorated to this point in the season. The pattern is clear: the bulk of the underperformance comes from Cal and Julio. Last year they combined for 15 WAR and were projected by Steamer to total about 12 WAR this season. They’re currently on pace for roughly 4 WAR. It was never realistic to expect Cal to replicate his near-historic 2025, and even Steamer’s forecast wasn’t expecting perfection. But the reality is harsher than that: Cal hasn’t just slipped; he hasn’t been remotely close to average. He’s endured a rough spell that began with injury. Reports from Manny Acta indicate Cal didn’t get enough reps with Team USA at the World Baseball Classic, tried to compensate afterward, overexerted himself, and strained his oblique. He attempted to push through early in the season, only to land on the injured list after a brutal 0-for stretch. Since returning in mid-June, he hasn’t found his timing. He posted a 62 wRC+ before the injury and sits at 88 wRC+ since his return.
Julio isn’t being painted with the same brush in the same way, but his year hasn’t lived up to expectations either. He started strong at the plate but stumbled in the outfield. He improved defensively in June, yet his bat cooled again. He did show signs of waking up toward the end of the month, but then suffered a severe blow: Nolan Schanuel drilled him in the head with a baserunning collision, and Julio is now on the injured list with a concussion. That missing production matters a great deal. Cal and Julio began the year as the top two hitters for the Mariners, each projected to be among the best in the league. I compared the two best projected Mariners batters by Steamer to their actual prorated WAR to measure the gap. The Mariners have the largest negative delta among teams when you look at the top two hitters relative to expectations.
When you widen the lens to the rest of the lineup, the teams just below the Mariners in the data set—the Blue Jays, Padres, Mets, and Phillies—have fared worse offensively overall, but the Mariners have been notably stingier up and down the lineup. The team’s overall wRC+ sits at an even 100, suggesting that, while there are solid contributors elsewhere, the aggregate impact of the non-star players hasn’t been enough to offset the shortfalls from Cal and Julio. In other words, the Mariners’ struggles aren’t simply about the top two; the rest of the roster hasn’t carried the load to compensate for the star duo’s downturn and the unfortunate concussion injury to Rodríguez has only intensified the problem.
In summary, the Mariners came into the season with high expectations anchored by Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez, but the returns have fallen well short of those projections. The story isn’t that one part of the roster underperformed in isolation; the combination of Cal’s injury, slow recovery, and Julio’s concussion—coupled with underwhelming contributions from the rest of the lineup—has left Seattle without enough premium offense to support a competitive run through the season. The 2026 projections had some optimism baked in, but the actual results, particularly from the team’s two biggest stars, have not aligned with the forecast, leaving the Mariners in need of a stronger bounce-back from their roster as a whole.