This weekend, Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh will play in the quarterfinal round of the 2026 World Baseball Classic, as Team USA advanced with a 3-1 record.

Also this weekend, M's outfielder Randy Arozarena will be back at Mariners spring training after Team Mexico was eliminated by Team Italy on Wednesday night.

And when Arozarena gets back to camp, he'll undoubtedly be inundated with questions about the incident with Raleigh from the Mexico-USA game on Monday night.

The two teams played Monday night in a pool play game of the World Baseball Classic. The Americans hadn't beaten Mexico since 2006 and both teams are taking this tournament extremely seriously. Perhaps what ensued was just Raleigh treating Arozarena like an opponent, and not like it's an All-Star Game.

Arozarena stepped to the plate in the top of the first inning and looked to shake Raleigh's hand, but Raleigh didn't oblige. Instead, Raleigh said something to Arozarena, with Arozarena leaning in.

The reason the story blew up was because of Arozarena's postgame comments on the manner. Speaking in Spanish, Arozarena went into an expletive-laced rant, which was translated online by numerous social media accounts.

Per The Athletic:

“The only thing he should be thankful for is having such great parents,” Arozarena told Mexican journalist Luis Gilbert in Spanish. “He’s very well educated, thank God. I was lucky enough to see them a few days ago at the hotel. They came over to greet me, gave me a big hug, and were genuinely proud to see me again.”

Then, he launched into profanity-laced criticism, suggesting Raleigh should “(expletive) off” and “go to hell.”

“That ‘good to see you’ that he said to me,” Arozarena said. “He can shove it straight up his (expletive). I’m out.”

Some people found Arozarena's comments to be entertaining. Some people thought he was joking, but as the days have gone on, it seems pretty clear that Arozarena was bothered by the whole thing. Raleigh has come out and spoken positively about Arozarena, while Arozarena declined to talk about it at the WBC, feeding more intrigue.

We spoke with ESPN MLB Insider Buster Olney on the latest 'Refuse to Lose' podcast, and he addressed the issue, saying he doesn't like the Team USA "policy" to not shake hands. 

He also said he thinks Arozarena went too far with his comments, but they prove that he was clearly upset.

"I thought it was over the top. In that setting, it's clear that he was upset. I think he probably, as I mentioned, I think he probably thought it was unimaginable that Cal wouldn't shake hands or dap him up or look over to him and say 'hi' or something like that.

But here's the thing. And I know yesterday there were reporters saying, 'it's no big deal.' It obviously is something that they feel like they need to address. Because Cal has been working overtime to make that happen, to say, 'no, we're good. We'll be okay.'

And I think they will get to that point for sure. The fact that Randy prefaced all of his remarks by talking about how great Cal's parents are shows that there's a base there just to move past this at some point. But the idea that there's nothing to this, that this is just something that you wash away? All you have to do is look at Randy Arozarena's face and know, nope in fact, somebody was offended. And they're going to have to deal with it now. And I'm sure Cal will."

Remember to join our MARINERS on ROUNDTABLE community, which is FREE! You can post your own thoughts, in text or video form, and you can engage with our Roundtable staff, as well as other Mariners fans. If prompted to download the Roundtable APP, that's free too!