What to expect from Luke Raley in 2025

Seattle Mariners
Written By Jeff Nooney

By Jeffrey Nooney, edited by Charles Hamaker

Seattle, WA - As we get ever closer to Opening Day, the Seattle Mariners roster is beginning to take shape. No, the Mariners did not go out and acquire a premier bat like most fans would have wanted or really add to their lineup at all this past offseason. With holes all over the infield, this was a very frustrating offseason and the fanbase has unfortunately grown accustomed to that sort of thing. The offense struggled last season, and the front office was not able to bring in much impact with the limited boost in payroll that they were allotted by ownership. The 2025 season will come down to key players having bounce back seasons, or role players taking a big step forward. One of those role players is Luke Raley, who is penciled in a platoon at first base and had a strong year after being acquired via trade with the Tampa Bay Rays, where he had largely been a utility player for the Florida based squad. In an ideal world, players like Raley and Dylan Moore are the first players off your bench and can fill in at any position besides pitcher and catcher. With how the offseason went for Seattle, that’s not the case and both of those players seem primed for starting spots on the right side of the infield. Here’s a look into what we might be able to expect from “Nuke Raley” in 2025.

Seattle Mariners infielder/outfielder Luke Raley throughout the course of the 2024 season in games played at T-Mobile Park. (Photos by Kevin Ng for Circling Seattle Sports)

Luke Raley had a good season in 2024. His slash line was .243/.320/.463/.783 with an OPS+ of 129, 29% above the league average of 100. He hit 22 home runs, drove in 58 and swiped eleven bases. All of the surface numbers are good, which may surprise some people considering that the vast majority of the Mariners lineup was bad at the plate and Raley had spent the large part of his career as a bench/utility guy. He is a solid defender at first but also has the positional flexibility to play all three outfield positions, where his speed helps give him the range needed to look the part. He is a pure left-handed power hitter, who has struggled against left-handed pitching throughout his career, including this past season as he hit for an average of just .182 with a .570 OPS in 82 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers. His OPS+ of 129 ranked second for the Mariners in 2024, behind only Victor Robles (155).

While his 2024 season was pretty good on paper, a look under the hood shows that he was still a bit inconsistent. Raley smashed fastballs, hitting .306 while slugging .628. Luke saw fastballs in 48.6% of the total pitches he faced, so those stats are really good. 15 of his 22 home runs came off of a fastball, while his whiff % on fastballs was only 27.1%. His run value on fastballs in 2024 was 15, higher than Brent Rooker, Bobby Witt Jr. and Pete Alonso (should he have qualified).

Where Raley really struggled in 2024 was the off-speed and breaking pitches. As impressive as he was against fastballs in 2024, he was really bad against sliders. He hit just .149, while slugging just .299. His -8 run value ranked him as the 5th worst hitter against the slider in all of baseball. His -8 tied Mitch Haniger, while being slightly better than Mitch Garver. You read that right, the Mariners had three of the worst five players in all of baseball against sliders in 2024. Just brutal, and that continues to emphasize Seattle’s struggles at the plate and why the fanbase is so frustrated with the little money allotted by ownership to the front office to acquire better bats in free agency.

Looking at Luke Raley, you would not expect him to be a fast man at all. He is listed as 6’4”, 235 pounds, but his sprint speed is inside the 90th percentile for the league. It has been said that he runs like he is mad at the ground, and it shows if you ever watch him on the field. Raley stole more bases for the Tampa Bay Rays during the 2023 season, but if he could get on base a bit more, he could easily have a 20 home run / 20 steal season in 2025 considering the power and speed combination he possesses.

The Mariners had the second most strikeouts in MLB history last season, and while Luke definitely added to that total on his own, he did strikeout at a career low 29.7% clip. That is still way too much, as the MLB average in 2024 was 22.7%. His walk rate left a lot to be desired, as he walked in just 5.8% of his plate appearances, far below the MLB average of 8.4%. If Luke could cut down on the strikeouts and raise his walk rate to about league average, the potential is there for him to be an all-star level player. That is asking a lot from him to fix in one offseason, but I would really like to see him drive that walk rate up considering the strikeout issues that this team already deals with and the speed he has to be able to cause some chaos on the base pathes.

I know there is a lot of negative stats for Luke in here, but at the end of the day, he hit for power, stole bases and put together a 3.2 bWAR season in 2024, the third highest of the Mariners position players. I think there is still a lot left in his tank, and I do believe that we have not seen the best of Luke Raley quite yet as his WAR has only gone up in his four seasons at the big league level. If he puts together a mirror image of his 2024 season in 2025, I wouldn’t be too upset with him, but I do think he can be much more effective as he gets more experience and playing time at first base while occasionally giving one of the outfielders a day off their feet.

As always, Go Mariners!

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Jeff Nooney
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