40 in 40 2025: Jorge Polanco
Horsepower, horsepower, all this polo on, I got horsepower, but the horse is Vote for Lust.
Run it back, but not too quickly. Jorge Polanco returning marked the grim confirmation of the Seattle Mariners adamance at not investing to improve their roster from where they concluded 2024. Quite literally the same guy, Polo’s return to cover primarily third base this time offers immense before/after Alex Jones vibes. It’s not unthinkable that a Polanco with a knee repaired from where it spent most or all of 2024 - or perhaps even longer per reporting by Ryan Divish and Ken Rosenthal - could be a much more productive player.
It’s all typical Best Shape of Your Life stuff, but the buzz is better around Jorge’s hitting, which is where the 31 year old has always made his hay. A season at the dish like his 2018, 2019, or 2021-2023 would be spectacular for Seattle, as well as for the manufacturers of sunglasses that look like they’re designed for 19th century vampire aristocrats.
Defensively, it’s just extraordinarily difficult to predict Polanco’s faculties. The surgery Polo had was a repair of his patellar tendon in his knee, but not a complete tear a la Edwin Díaz a few years ago. That puts him in line with the injury some other recent big leaguers have had, including Yordan Alvarez of the Astros, Kutter Crawford of the Red Sox, and Asdrubal Cabrera during his time with the Mets. Not having suffered the dramatic tear that Sugar endured, Polo’s variation is in the more insidious degenerative variation, wherein some days feel fine, and others felt sore to the point of impacting his play, clearly. Crawford is still in recovery stages, however both Alvarez and Cabrera offer encouragement that the idea of better days isn’t just fluff. For Asdrubal, three more productive seasons as an infielder were ahead. In many ways a similar player to Polanco, that’s the recovery Seattle has some cause to hope for. To be seen is whether Polanco’s physical health and confidence in his movements return in time for him to move at ease for the M’s swiftly this year.
Projections:
FGDC: 546 PA, 103 wRC+, 1.9 fWAR, .224/.308/.383
PECOTA: 526 PA, 99 DRC+, 1.4 WARP, .221/.307/.384
Overs/Unders:
Zach: Over
What if Teoscar Hernandez, but we hung on to him for the bounceback season?
Eric: Under
(more shower emojis) Just kidding, but not really. I’m literally praying for a bounceback season for the sake of these Seattle Mariners players who need and deserve a decent middle infielder (who might be forced to play more third base than ever before in his pro career despite having one of the weakest throwing arms in MLB, ranked at 355 out of 388 eligible infielders in 2024 per Statcast). Hopefully the offseason knee surgery has a positive impact on his overall game, but yeah, what could possibly go wrong?
Kate: Over, with a caveat
I think Polanco was more hurt than any of us knew last year, and he just never got an opportunity to be the player he is. But I’m concerned about sliding him to a new defensive position, where he will very likely be at best “not up to the standard Mariners fans have enjoyed from their third basemen for the past decade-plus,” and at worst be so bad that Perry Hill captains a boat and abandons him in the Bering Strait. That can shake a player on both sides of the ball, and could tank the already fragile web of bouncing back an infielder on the wrong side of 30. So I’m betting on the bat, betting against the fielder, and hoping we see more of the former than the latter.