Report: Mariners Significant issue is Luke Raley depature decision

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I love watching my large son Luke Raley run around on a baseball field

Luke Raley’s run is an assault on both physics and visual aesthetics and I will defend it until the day I die

There is something so aesthetically pleasing and deeply soul-satisfying about watching fast people run. It is an argument for the divine, the most perfect expression of the gift of movement endowed upon our mortal bone-bags. To witness Elly De La Cruz in motion is like watching water flow faster and faster until it erupts over the banks of Niagara. The Cardinals’ Victor Scott II runs like he was fired out of a gun, more mechanical than man as he single-handedly, systematically ruins pitchers’ days. It is as joyful to watch our own Julio Rodríguez—currently comfortably the fastest Mariner on the team until Jonatan Clase racks up enough big-league time to challenge him—run the bases as it is to watch him glide around centerfield; he settles nicely in the Top 10 for Sprint Speed. But the next-fastest Mariner is a name you might not guess.

Or maybe, if you’re like me and have been staring at the sliders on Luke Raley’s Savant page like you believe they contain coordinates to the location of Cleopatra’s tomb, it’s not a surprise. Raley currently ranks in the 89th percentile by Sprint Speed. To contextualize that, he’s currently faster by Sprint Speed than Anthony Volpe, who is a shortstop and 23 years old, and Jackson Holiday, who is a literal infant. He’s faster than Arizona’s Blaze Alexander and Detroit’s Colt Keith, who have the advantages of nominative determinism. He’s faster than José Altuve and Steven Kwan, two players who might fit not just in Luke Raley’s pocket, but in the other, smaller pocket in that pocket. And he does all of this while standing six-foot-four, and not six-four like Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is six-four, but six-four like Alek Manoah is six-four. No one is describing Luke Raley as “sneaky tall.” All those arms and legs are coming directly at you all the time, Everything Everywhere All At Once-style. Luke Raley in motion is not the graceful ballet of Julio or De La Cruz, nor the racing-track thrill of Scott, nor the compact, Olympic gymnast-like athleticism of Bobby Witt Jr. It is a demolition derby of body parts and I can’t stop talking about it.

Luke Raley’s style of running—if something that is one of the few remaining scraps of the Old Magic in today’s world can be termed a “style”—first caught my eye in a game against the Reds back on Jackie Robinson Day, when he ambushed a first-pitch slider from Buck Farmer and smoked it into the left-center gap. It got past a diving Will Benson, and at that point, Raley shifted from “Autobahn” to “Mad Max” setting. It was, to put it mildly if only because there aren’t words in human language for it yet, majestic.

Lacking the words to describe this spectacle, I would like a foley artist to score this run. I imagine it would go something like: HURRR! BOB-I-DA-BOB-I-DA-BOB-I-DA! VARRRRRM! AWOOOOGAH! AWOOOOOOOOOOOOGAH! HA-CHA-CHA-CHA-CHA! (Please consider this my contribution towards Vox’s new deal with our OpenAI overlords.)

Really, though, I should have seen this coming from Spring Training, when Julio was being in-game interviewed while Raley hit his first triple as a Mariner. Look at Julio’s reaction to the spectacle of Raley legging out an almost identical triple and tell me it doesn’t have extreme Benoit Blanc “makes no damn sense/compels me though” vibes:

Luke Raley runs recklessly. He runs head down and shoulders forward like a charging bull. His elbows extend like the broken spokes of a hijacked stagecoach. His long legs stride with the mechanical precision of the Tomy Space Pets Stretch Legged Stoomdorn, a toy so old and obscure and forgotten I can’t find image of it in motion but trust me. When he hits peak speed rounding the bases, all six feet four inches of him tilt precariously at a 45 degree angle like he’s banking around the turns in a velodrome.

When Luke Raley runs he makes a misery of physics. Somehow his legs get too far out in front of him, Robert Crumb’s Keep on Truckin’ hippie in baseball pants. It’s cartoonish, like something Tex Avery would draw fleeing the Roadrunner, except the roadrunner in question is the bonds of gravity and spacetime itself. There is an element of madcap danger to this man in motion, like the getaway scene in a heist movie where you’re rooting for the crew of lovable rascals to make it to the border with the loot.

Speaking of ill-obtained lucre, Raley runs much the same when he steals bases. Really, maybe Raley doesn’t believe in stealing; maybe he believes bases should be collectively owned. How else to describe this slide from last night’s game, which is giving “funcle on the Slip-n-Slide at the family barbecue after drinking a pitcher of Aunt Bee’s Knock-You-Naked margaritas.”