Luke Raley is a big, strong man. The Seattle outfielder stands 6-foot-4, weighs 235 pounds, and spent much of his childhood in Ohio felling trees with a chainsaw. He’s got a huge arm, and he’s boasted a maximum exit velocity at or above the 90th percentile in three of the last four seasons. Former teammates have called him “a big ball of muscle” and said, “He kind of plays like a monster.” Just last night he launched a moonshot home run that reached an altitude of 104 feet. And yet somehow, if you Google the phrase luke raley feats of strength, this is all that comes up:
First of all, yes, Raley is married. He found out that he got traded to Seattle during his honeymoon, while playing pool volleyball. Second, there’s a pretty good reason that Raley’s strength doesn’t headline his search results: He’s more than just a beef boy. Raley has finesse. In fact, he’s currently tied with Jacob Young for the major league lead with five bunts for a base hit. While Young has a 35.7% success rate on his bunts, Raley is the only player so far this decade to bunt for at least five hits in a season while maintaining a 1.000 batting average on those bunt attempts. Want to guess who’s in second place? That would be 2023 Luke Raley, who went 5-for-6 in his bunt attempts. The big, strong man has a big, strong bunt game.
If you go back all the way to 2002, the first year we have information on bunt success rate, only three players have accomplished that feat over a full season. In 2018, Scott Kingery went 5-for-5. In 2019, Matt Olson did the same, while Brandon Belt went 7-for-7. Raley, putting on his bunting clinic without the benefit of the infield shift, is on pace for 12 bunt hits this season, but he’d only need two to tie the record.
This is extremely fun for a few reasons, the first being that Raley simply doesn’t look like the type of player who leads the league in bunt hits. Below is a graph that shows every player with at least four bunt hits this season. You know as well as I do which players are supposed to bunt for hits: Scrappy little guys with a chip on their shoulder who make up for their lack of power with a combination of speed and grit. And yes, those guys are represented in the graph, but Raley is there too, towering above them. It’s not only that he’s way taller than they are. It’s that he’s just plain bigger. Generally speaking, listed weights aren’t that informative since they don’t get updated with much regularity. However, it’s worth consulting them in this case, given that Raley outweighs Garrett Hampson, the second player on the list, by more than 50 pounds:
If Raley and Jose Altuve wanted to go on a see-saw together — and there is no reason to believe that they don’t — Altuve would need to stuff his pockets with 214 baseballs in order to balance out the weight differential. If Raley and Steven Kwan wanted to go on a see-saw together, Kwan could balance out the differential by stuffing his pockets with 39% of Jose Altuve.
The second reason Raley might not strike you as a champion bunter is that his run is, well, slightly hilarious. He pounds the ground forcefully and kicks his heels up almost all the way to his butt with each step. The effect is a sort of optical illusion; it looks like he’s winding up to take a gigantic stride, only to change his mind and put his foot down a few inches behind where he picked it up in the first place. Wrote John Trupin, “Luke Raley runs like he is not moving himself faster, but instead slowing the earth’s rotation with the force and friction of each step.” Raley also puffs his chest out, extends his hands away from his body for maximum wind resistance, and keeps his elbows extremely active. He seems not to be pumping his arms so much as he is trying to find out how far behind him they are capable of extending before something in his rotator cuff snaps:
Raley is aware of all this. He has attempted more than once to alter his running style, but luckily he hasn’t succeeded. “I mean, I see it,” he told reporters. “Trust me. I’ve seen plenty of videos of myself playing, and I go, ‘Wow, that looks really bad.’” But here’s the thing: It works. Raley is undeniably fast. His 28.8 ft/sec sprint speed puts him in the 86th percentile, and it makes him not just the third-fastest player on the Mariners, but the third-fastest 29-year-old in baseball. He may not look like someone who should be bunting for a hit, but the success rate doesn’t lie.
To check out Raley’s bunts, you can venture over to Baseball Savant’s search page and check the absolute greatest of the many, many available boxes:
There’s something delightfully bizarre about the phrase Is Bunt. Not that it’s alone — there are lots of great options here. Is Blast definitely has its charms; it sounds like something a toddler from the 1960s would ask if you tried to explain what a Slip ‘N Slide was. Is Last Pitch is also fun, in that it sounds like a not-so-vague threat from a pitching coach who doubles as a mob enforcer. But Is Bunt is the best. It sounds like what the play-by-play announcer screams in the bottom of the ninth inning when they’re so shocked by a suicide squeeze that all grammar and syntax go flying out the window.
Raley has fouled off two bunts this season, making for seven total attempts. His technique has been the same on all seven. He’s not drag bunting up the first base line, and he’s not bailing out of the box at top speed and simply trying to get the ball down any way he can. He’s squaring all the way around fairly early in the pitcher’s delivery and pushing the ball firmly between the mound and the third base line. When you pause the video at that point and see Raley hunched over, body angled toward third base, legs spread wide, completely flat-footed, you’d absolutely guess that he was attempting to execute a sacrifice (or possibly to sneak up on Scooby-Doo and his meddling human friends):
But then two things happen. First, the bunt goes down in the perfect spot: far enough from the third base line that it doesn’t risk going foul, firm enough to get past the pitcher, and weak enough that the third baseman has to charge hard. Second, Raley starts running.
His first two official bunt hits came simply because the third baseman was shaded over toward shortstop. Neither bunt even drew a throw, and the second was so perfectly placed that third baseman Eugenio Suárez, with no play to make, instead decided to kick it into foul territory:
Raley’s third bunt hit came with no outs and a runner on second base. The Mariners were leading, 6-5, in the ninth inning, making it an understandable time for a sacrifice. While Raley no doubt would have settled for moving the runner over, he was after more. Third baseman Ildemaro Vargas declined to barehand the ball, but still made a quick, strong throw. It just wasn’t fast enough to catch the speeding Raley, who was called out initially, but was shown to have beaten the throw by the slimmest of margins on review. It wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t taking advantage of a hole in the defense. It was just a 6-foot-4, 235-pound man beating out a bunt hit in an obvious bunt situation:
Raley’s fourth bunt hit came last Wednesday. This time, he challenged Maikel Garcia, who has a strong case for being the best third baseman in all of baseball. Garcia was playing deep, but not necessarily out of position, and Raley’s bunt forced him to make a do-or-die barehanded play. The rushed throw would have beaten Raley had it been on target, but it ended up sailing wide and into the Dugout Suite. (The Dugout Suites are pretend dugouts situated right next to the actual dugouts in Kauffman Stadium. They feature authentic dugout seating, along with an air-conditioned interior area, for when you want to experience the game just like a player, unless it’s warm out. They’re available to rent for large groups for a mere $4,375, unless you want food or drinks, which cost extra.):
Raley’s last bunt hit was definitely the most exciting. It came with the Mariners down by a run in the bottom of the eighth inning. With two outs and runners on first and third, it was such a surprise that play-by-play announcer Dave Sims was mere moments from simply screaming, “Is bunt! Is bunt!” Instead, he yelled, “Bunt! Oh yeah, that’s gonna work!” He popped the B in bunt so loud that you have to pity the poor sound engineer whose ear drums were ruptured by the call:
Raley had hit two balls above 105 mph in the game, and yet he managed to lay down a perfect bunt on a 99.1-mph fastball up and in. With two outs, it was an incredibly bold move. For the third time this season, the third baseman had no choice but to eat the ball, and the Mariners would complete the comeback in the ninth on a walk-off grand slam by Cal Raleigh. No one has bunted for a base hit or a sacrifice on a faster pitch this season, and Raley’s bunt increased Seattle’s chances of winning by 30%, making it the most consequential play of the game. Raley, who is tied for second on the team with seven home runs, seemed to be looking for the opportunity to bunt. “The first two pitches, the third baseman was in and the lane wasn’t there,” he told Shannon Drayer. “And after the second pitch, he backed up and I decided just to take my shot… It’s tough, but it’s one of those things. You’ve just got to be patient, get the bunt down, and run as hard as you can.”
The fun thing about all of this is that Raley’s power and stature must surely be part of the reason for his success as a bunter. You have to imagine that the fact that he’s gone 10-for-11 on bunts since the start of last season has made it into scouting reports. Still, if you’re a third baseman who just watched him blast a 110-mph liner off the wall and then lumber around the bases a couple innings ago, it might be hard to believe that you shouldn’t be playing deep and shading over toward the hole. It won’t be until it’s already too late, until you’ve walked over, picked up the perfectly-placed ball, and put it in your pocket that you finally accept the truth: Luke Raley Is Bunt.
