We’re only 20 games into the 2019 Major League Baseball
season, but Jorge Polanco is currently the fifth most valuable hitter in
baseball by fWAR standards. The Twins shortstop has a cycle to his credit, nearly
paired that with another, and has been on an absolute tear out of the gate. For
a guy who was always expected to be carried by his bat, the production isn’t
that surprising, but the level in which he’s producing is a bit shocking to say
the least.
Coming up through the Twins system, there was plenty of
questions regarding where Polanco would play. He had the athleticism and
quickness for shortstop, but his arm strength and glove work left some to be
desired at such an important role. Starting out in the organization as a 16-year-old,
he bounced between the middle infield and some brief outfield work until 2014.
Getting in 117 starts at short between High-A and Double-A that year, it looked
like he’d found his home. Then 2016 happened. After playing 64 games for Triple-A
Rochester at second, he was promoted to the big leagues as the regular
shortstop. It didn’t go well.
During his first full time experience with the Twins,
Polanco turned in a -8 DRS and -9.8 UZR in just over 400 innings at short. From
there, he’s worked incredibly hard to make that a thing of the past. North of 1,100
innings in 2017 saw just a -1 DRS, and in a suspension shortened 664 innings
last year, that -1 number was replicated. Working with the small sample size of
162 innings in 2019, Polanco owns his first positive DRS tally of his career.
We’re here for the sexy part of this story though, and everyone
knows that’s offense. Minnesota’s shortstop owns a .392/.452/.716 slash line
and his .478 wOBA is 6th among qualified hitters in all of baseball.
Sure, the sample size here is equally small, but there’s less than five players
going better offensively than Jorge Polanco is right now.
It’s painfully obvious how nice the production is, but the
real questions are how, and will it continue? Jorge currently owns a 42.9% hard
hit rate which is easily a career high and is 14% higher than his career
average. He’s also elevating the ball more, combining to get it off the ground
over 80% of the time. That’s helped to not only produce extra base hits but has
him looking at a career best 12.5% HR/FB ratio.
Like many of his teammates, Polanco’s swing chart hasn’t
changed too drastically. He’s up slightly in his swinging strike rate, but chase
rates and swing percentages are all along career norms. If there’s an outlier,
it’s that Polanco has increased his contact percentage by about 7%. Aggressiveness
and ambushing opposing pitchers is a blueprint that this Rocco Baldelli team
has bought into, however. Minnesota has the lowest pitches per plate appearance
tally in baseball, seeing just 3.68 on average.
As the season goes on, Polanco’s greatest adjustment will be
like one many in this lineup will see. If their current attack focuses on
jumping early, they’ll need to make sure pitches still warrant swinging at. With
opposing pitchers looking for soft contact and to generate more swinging
strikes, they’ll likely need to work down in the zone, or serve up fewer
enticing offerings altogether. If Polanco can keep honed into an eye allowing
him a career best 9.5% walk rate, he should be able to discern what is being
wasted on him early in counts.
There’s no reason to believe that Jorge Polanco, or any
hitter in today’s game, is going to hit remotely close to .400 over the course
of a season. From a batted ball profile though, hitting the ball harder,
higher, earlier, and on better offerings is a recipe destined for success. We’ll
see regression, but the only question is whether that trends towards a more
stable level, or just average career norms. Right now, I’d bank on that being
closer to the former than the latter.
