Will Cal Raleigh lead the MLB in RBIs for the 2026 regular season?

Last season's home run and RBI leader through the All-Star break is currently posting one of the worst batting averages in baseball. That single fact captures everything analytically relevant about this contract. Raleigh's power is genuine and documented — a legitimate 40-plus home run profile at his peak that produced 100 RBI in a monster season. But RBI accumulation requires getting on base, driving in runners who reach base ahead of you, and making contact consistently enough to generate opportunities. His 2026 contact rate has collapsed to a level that disconnects his power from his RBI production regardless of how hard he hits the ball when he connects. The counting stat deficit to the current leaders is the mathematical constraint that makes recovery essentially impossible even if his contact rate rebounds dramatically. RBI leaders typically finish in the 120-140 range. Closing a 30-plus RBI gap to the current leaders while also fixing the underlying contact problems that created the gap — all within the second half of a single season — requires compounding multiple reversals simultaneously rather than simply getting hot. The archetype mismatch in his current form matters too. Even Raleigh at his 2025 peak represented the upper tail of his own distribution, not a repeatable baseline. The version of Raleigh who could realistically contend for an RBI title requires both a return to that peak form and enough remaining games to accumulate the volume. Neither condition is visible in current performance indicators. Bottom line: This is a deficit-plus-form problem, not just a deficit problem. The two issues would need to resolve simultaneously and quickly. Watch his contact rate and OPS trajectory as the indicators of whether he's trending back toward his established level or deeper into the current hole.