This absurd Cal Raleigh stat just made Pirates' season feel even worse

It's not easy to celebrate another team when yours is down in the dumps, but it's hard not to root for the Seattle Mariners as they pursue their first World Series appearance in franchise history.

They just secured their first division title in a quarter-century, locking in a playoff bye in a crowded American League field.

A lot of credit has to go to their franchise catcher Cal Raleigh, who should be the favorite for the AL MVP award after surpassing 60 home runs on the year.

While Raleigh's power output has been historic for a catcher, it also puts the Pittsburgh Pirates to shame. The Pirates finished the season ranked dead last in the league in home runs (by a country mile) with 117, and the team leader (Oneil Cruz) only had 20 of his own.

In fact, you'd need to combine the Pirates' best (Cruz, 20 home runs), second-best (Bryan Reynolds, 16), third-best (Andrew McCutchen, 13), and fourth-best (Spencer Horwitz, 11) power threats to even approximate the amount of round-trippers Raleigh has produced this season.

And as you might expect from an MVP candidate, Raleigh has had quite the nose for clutch situations this year. His 23 home runs in the seventh inning or later in 2025 are more than the entire Pirates franchise.

Cal Raleigh's power surge offers bleak reminder of how far Pirates have to go on offense

Now, it's not exactly fair to compare one of the best hitters in the sport to other players. Only one team has Cal Raleigh, and given his sizable contract, you can be sure it's not the Pirates.

Still, it's utterly inexcusable that a catcher has hit more than half the amount of home runs than every single Pirate combined has this season. Pittsburgh's 117 homers are 31 shy of the 29th-ranked team; that's the same difference as the 10th-place Tigers and the 20th-place Reds.

Of course, this isn't a novel issue. The Pirates haven't been able to keep pace in the power game for years. In 2024, they ranked 25th in the league in home runs with 160; that number was down to 159 in 2023 (28th).

This year has been especially woeful. You have to go back to 2022 to find another team that finished with fewer home runs than these Pirates, and that was the 66-96 Detroit Tigers.

Besides some blind optimism that Oneil Cruz is finally going to figure it all out in 2026, where is the solution to his problem? Horwitz should improve with more reps against big league pitching and Reynolds will hopefully revert to his 25-homer form, but the only guy above A-ball in the system to hit at least 20 home runs was 25-year-old Nick Cimillo in Double-A Altoona.

This remains Ben Cherington's white whale, and until some purposeful changes are made to address this ongoing issue, the power outage in Pittsburgh is only going to get more embarassing.