The Big Dumper just left the yard again!

In what has become a regular occurrence during Cal Raleigh‘s incredible 2025 season, the Seattle Mariners catcher added two more home runs to his historic total Tuesday — and passed another MLB legend in the process.

Raleigh has already surpassed the record for home runs by a catcher and by a switch-hitter and joined the prestigious 50-homer club, and who could forget his Home Run Derby triumph earlier this summer?

What record could Raleigh set next, how many home runs will he finish with and just how impressive is his season? We’ve got it all covered.

Raleigh must-reads: Raleigh’s road to homer history | Surprising 50-HR seasons | Best power half-seasons in MLB history

Raleigh’s current pace

Raleigh is now at 56 home runs and on pace for 60 with 11 games left.

The American League record is 62, set by Aaron Judge in 2022, and there have been only nine 60-home run seasons in MLB history.

Who Raleigh passed with his latest home run

With his 55th and 56th home runs Tuesday, Raleigh passed Mickey Mantle (yes, you read that right: The Mick himself) for the most in a season by a switch-hitter.

Raleigh and Mantle (who reached the mark twice) are the only switch-hitters in MLB history with 50 long balls in a single season — well ahead of Lance Berkman and Chipper Jones, who each hit 45 in their most prolific home run season.

Who Raleigh can catch with his next home run

The next milestone up for Raleigh is passing Ken Griffey Jr.’s Mariners franchise record of 56, which Raleigh tied with his two-homer effort Tuesday. That’s a number Griffey reached twice — in the 1997 and 1998 seasons.

Raleigh has already joined Griffey as the only Mariners with 50 home runs (or even 45) in a season. Raleigh is also the first Seattle slugger with 40 homers in a season since Nelson Cruz in 2016.

Raleigh’s 5 most impressive feats of 2025

Most home runs in a season by a switch-hitter

With his 55th home run, Raleigh knocked Mickey Mantle, who hit 54 in 1961, from the top spot. Breaking Salvador Perez‘s record of 48 home runs by a primary catcher understandably got a lot of attention, but beating Mantle’s mark is arguably more impressive given how long the record stood and the Hall of Famer’s stature.

One of the best months ever for a catcher

In May, Raleigh hit .304/.430/.739 with 12 home runs and 26 RBIs. Only four catchers have hit more home runs in a calendar month and only eight with at least 100 plate appearances produced a higher slugging percentage. Raleigh was almost as good in June, hitting .300/.398/.690 with 11 home runs and 27 RBIs, giving him two-month totals of .302/.414/.714 with 23 home runs and 53 RBIs. In one blazing 24-game stretch from May 12 to June 7, Raleigh hit .319 with 14 home runs.

Reaching 100 runs and 100 RBIs

Raleigh is sitting on 101 runs scored while leading the American League with 115 RBIs. Only eight other primary catchers have reached 100 in both categories in the same season — Mike Piazza did it twice, in 1997 and 1999, and he and Ivan Rodriguez were the last catchers to do it in ’99. Of the other catchers, seven are in the Hall of Fame (Piazza, Rodriguez, Mickey Cochrane, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk). The lone exception is Darrell Porter, who reached the milestone with the Royals in 1979.

Tying Ken Griffey Jr.’s club record for home runs

Griffey hit 56 home runs for the Mariners in 1997 and 1998, leading the AL both seasons and winning the MVP Award in 1997 (he and Ichiro Suzuki in 2001 are Seattle’s two MVP winners). Griffey had the advantage of playing in the cozy confines of the Kingdome in those years, although his home/road splits were fairly even. Raleigh, however, has had to play in a tough park to hit in, with 30 of his 56 home runs coming on the road, where his OPS is about 100 points higher. That marks only the 19th time a player has reached 30 road homers (by contrast, 30 homers at home has been accomplished 37 times).

An outside shot at most total bases by a catcher

With 317 total bases, Raleigh’s 2025 campaign is already one of only 20 catcher seasons with 300 total bases (yes, time at DH has helped him here). The record is 355, shared by Piazza in 1997 and Bench in 1970 (both played 150-plus games in those seasons). Raleigh would need a strong finish to get there but could at least move into third place ahead of Perez’s 337 total bases in 2021. Not counted in Raleigh’s total bases: his 14 stolen bases!

While the nature of Donald Trump’s second state visit is indeed unusual, from the moment Sir Keir Starmer delivered the gold-edged invitation it began a process steeped in tradition.

State visits are usually reserved to one per head of state, with Trump last hosted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.

Typically, second-term US presidents are offered a shorter visit, perhaps tea or lunch with the monarch at Windsor Castle. But the red carpet is literally being rolled out once again, with Trump receiving a second full state visit, with all the pomp and pageantry it entails.

An indication was given early on in Trump’s second term that he’d be receptive to a second state visit, and so – on perhaps the advice of the new prime minister – the King issued a second invitation.

The greatest form of tradition is one that always evolves, and so this may now set a new precedent for presidents who are voted out but then return to serve a second term.

Any nation can hold a state visit, but what is unique about Britain remains our internationally respected pageantry.

Even down to the very invitation – there is a very precise format for inviting someone on a state visit.

An invite must be issued, established by international law. Written on a special gold-edged paper, embossed with a golden coat of arms that is issued, it forms part of a historic archive.

Breaches of protocol

Much has been made in the past about moments where protocol was breached – Michelle Obama famously put her arm around Queen Elizabeth in 2011, but, in all honesty, I doubt very much the Queen was upset by this.

The fuss was not made by the late monarch, who accepted that what mattered was that Americans should be made very welcome on behalf of the UK.

And then criticism emerged against Trump, who appeared to make the Queen change places when the Guard of Honour was to be inspected.

But, in truth, it was Elizabeth II who had to correct herself because, in her long life as sovereign, she never escorted a visiting president.

The escort should stand further from the troops and her self-correction was misinterpreted as his error.

Trump’s visit this time will likely generate just as many headlines, but I don’t think there will be critical moments where a breach occurs.

What it means for Trump – and is it worth it?

Trump’s mother would cut out and keep in a scrapbook containing pictures of the young Princess Elizabeth and her sister, Margaret Rose. It was an era before endless celebrity news, a time when public life revolved around the royals, the war, and survival.

And the president loved his mother, like many men do, so these things mean an enormous amount to him.

Read more:
No state visit has had a backdrop quite like this

When the horses go back to the stables and the carriages are put away, the impact of this visit will remain fresh in the mind of a president who may feel his nation – and maybe even he himself – have been affirmed by their ally.

Quite apart from the politics, although much will be said and written on that, there is one great hope for any state visit: that the country so many (myself included) have fought for can be safer and more successful as a result of the pomp and pageantry on display.

Russia has a “pretty good map” of Britain’s crucial network of undersea cables, experts have warned – potentially presenting Vladimir Putin with a “vulnerable soft underbelly” to attack.

While separated by 21 miles of water, a web of cables and pipelines nonetheless connects the UK and Europe.

These lines carry critical civilian and military communications, electricity and gas – things that underpin the fabric of our society.

But it’s hard to constantly keep an eye on hundreds of miles of subsea cables, leaving them vulnerable to sabotage.

After damage to undersea cables in the Red Sea caused internet disruption in Asia and the Middle East, Sky News looks at what subsea cables are and what damage to one or more of them – accidental or otherwise – could mean for the UK.

A Russian ‘spy’ ship in English waters

When the Yantar research vessel sailed through the English Channel earlier this year, she was followed closely by HMS Somerset.

At first glance, it might be odd for a Royal Navy warship to be asked to shadow a civilian boat. But Britain doesn’t believe the Yantar is a civilian vessel, it believes it is used for Russian surveillance.

Defence Secretary John Healey spelled it out in parliament, saying: “Let me be clear, this is a Russian spy ship used for gathering intelligence and mapping the UK’s critical underwater infrastructure.”

The Yantar complied with international rules of navigation, Mr Healey said. But this was not the first time it had been detected near Britain’s subsea installations, he added.

What are undersea cables?

There are around 60 sets of undersea cables branching out from the UK, Dr Sidharth Kaushal, an expert in maritime technology, told Sky News.

They are fairly wide, he says, and usually encased in a metal sheath. Closer to shore, they are often buried under concrete to further protect them. There are also pipelines which carry gas from the continent.

Some cables are in relatively shallow waters and are relatively easy to repair – they are often damaged unintentionally by commercial activity – while others are in deeper waters and require specialist equipment to fix if a problem arises.

A recent report from the IISS thinktank (the International Institute for Strategic Studies) highlighted the extent to which the European and global economies relies on them.

“Cables transmit around 95% of global data flows and underpin an estimated $10trn in financial transactions every day,” it said.

Making a map?

Experts believe Russia has spent recent years covertly mapping undersea cables in the West – some of which are military and whose locations are not public knowledge.

“We have seen an uptick in activity of Russian surveillance,” said RUSI thinktank expert Dr Kaushal.

Surface vessels have been gathering intelligence, but there have also been reports of Russian uncrewed submersibles being operated near undersea cables, he added.

“Given that this has been a persistent activity in an area on which they have placed some importance for quite some time… one would expect they have a pretty good map.”

Read more:
Russia’s ‘hybrid attacks’ against NATO ‘look like war’
Drones and salami: How Putin is testing the West

What does sabotage look like?

Severing undersea cables can have a detrimental impact on the countries they serve.

“There’s quite a bit of redundancy in the cable networks running across the Atlantic and indeed the cable networks that service the UK,” Dr Kaushal said. “It certainly would not be very easy to sabotage cables… in a way that would be impactful.”

While it might be easy for a hostile state to deny cutting one or two cables, a systematic effort to affect the UK by cutting enough to have an impact would be harder to disavow, he added.

This is particularly the case with cables that are in deeper water, reachable only by a handful of states.

Recent disruption to undersea cables has been blamed on “anchor-dragging by Russia’s shadow fleet”, the IISS said in its report.

In December, Finland seized the Eagle S oil ship which had been carrying Russian oil and was suspected of damaging the Estlink 2 undersea power cable in the Baltic Sea by dragging its anchor across it.

Russia has previously denied damaging undersea infrastructure.

Does the UK need to prepare?

Faced with an increasingly fraught international picture as the war in Ukraine grinds on, the UK parliament’s National Security Strategy committee launched an inquiry into undersea cables earlier this year.

It is examining how well the UK is able to defend its undersea infrastructure – and how resilient the nation would be in the event of a major, protracted disruption to our internet connection.

“Our internet cable network looks like an increasingly vulnerable soft underbelly,” chairman Matt Western MP said as the inquiry began.

“There is no need for panic – we have a good degree of resilience, and awareness of the challenge is growing. But we must be clear-eyed about the risks and consequences: an attack of this nature would hit us hard.”

Dr Kaushal argued that while there is a degree of redundancy in the undersea cables that serve the UK, the pipelines that bring gas to British homes are perhaps more vulnerable.

“I think in some ways the pipeline network is far more fragile because there we are more reliant on a handful of critical pipelines,” he said.