Luke Raley Found His Swing Again, and Edgar Martinez Made Sure of It

Luke Raley walked into the offseason with a problem and a Hall of Famer's homework assignment. Last season was rough for the Mariners slugger. Injuries piled up. Playing time disappeared. The power that made him a 3-win contributor the year before barely showed up. His batting average tanked. His slugging vanished. The Mariners coaching staff knew something had to change, and they knew exactly who to call.

Enter Edgar Martinez, the Mariners' senior director of hitting strategy. When a National Baseball Hall of Famer tells you your swing needs work, you listen. "Edgar was kind of the one that brought it up to me at first," Raley said. Martinez saw something in Raley's mechanics that could be fixed, and he wasn't shy about sharing the feedback. Raley was all in. "Especially talking to him, he saw some things they thought might help and after last year we figured why not try anything? We just found something that's been comfortable and seems to be helping me stay on some pitches."

The Problem Was In The Flow

Martinez diagnosed the issue quickly. Raley's swing had pauses. It would start, stop, then start again. Not one smooth motion, but a series of hitches that threw off his timing and put his barrel in the wrong spot as it came through the zone. Couple that with back and oblique injuries, and you had a recipe for disaster.

"We talked about wanting the swing to be a little more fluid," Martinez said. "It looked like he would start the swing, then stop, then start again. So it wasn't like one motion of his swing."

A Small Toe Tap Changed Everything

The fix was surprisingly simple. Martinez had Raley add a small toe tap as his trigger to start the swing. Some hitters use a big leg kick. Some don't stride at all. But Martinez believed that subtle movement would unlock the fluidity Raley needed.

"I've never toe tapped before this year," Raley said. "Started doing it in the offseason when I started hitting. Did it throughout spring training and we've continuously made little tweaks to it." Martinez also suggested moving Raley's hands back a couple of inches from their starting position, another micro-adjustment that rippled through his entire stroke.

A month into the season, it's working. Raley is batting .292 with a .938 OPS through 26 games. His five home runs in 79 plate appearances already exceed his total of four for the entire last season. He's got nine barrels so far, when he only recorded 13 the whole year before. His average exit velocity sits at 93.8 mph, which ranks in the top five percent across all of baseball.

That's the kind of early season pop Seattle needs right now, especially with Brendan Donovan currently on the injured list.

This article was created with AI assistance and reviewed by Seattle On Tap editorial staff. Always verify information with official team sources.