The Seattle Mariners have reunited with potential Angels' free-agent target second baseman Jorge Polanco on a one-year $7 million deal after declining his $12 million dollar option earlier this offseason. The deal also includes a mutual option that converts to a player option for 2026 if a plate appearance threshold is reached, though it's unclear what that threshold is.
For the Angels, this is good news. Polanco struggled mightily in Seattle last season to the tune of a .213/.296/.355 slash line, which produced a 92 wRC+. When you combine that with his poor defense, his 2024 season was worth just 0.3 fWAR.
Some analysts are lauding the signing speculating that offseason knee surgery will rejuvenate the soon-to-be 32-year-old who has been dealing with knee issues for years. That seems like a stretch. Chronic knee issues don't typically get better with age and Polanco's been on the decline for some time now. In his career year in 2021, Polanco blasted 33 homers and slashed .269/.323/.503 while striking out 18.3% of the time. In 2022 that strikeout rate rose to 21.3%, then 25.7% in 2023, before finally landing at 29.2% last season.
While you could blame the knee, it seems likely there's more to the story. Polanco's contact rates remained more or less the same when compared to his career averages in 2024 posting hard contact 30.9% of the time versus 31.7% for his career, medium contact at 55.0% versus a career mark of 51.4%, and soft contact which actually decreased to 14.2% versus his career average of 16.9%.
The type of contact he made was consistent as well, with ground ball rates of 33.8% against 32.8% in his career, line drives in 2024 at a rate of 24.1% identical to his career number, and 42.1% fly balls versus a 43.1% career mark.
Being that the contact quality is the same, but the strike-out rate is rising, it seems that the injury hadn't really sapped his power as much as his pitch recognition had fallen off. Combine that with Seattle's T-Mobile Park having the worst environment for hitters especially compared to the friendly confines he enjoyed in Minnesota where Target Field has been the fifth-best environment for hitters it seems more likely he's just not getting the same bang for his buck in his new digs.
Angels top prospect Christian Moore is already projected to outperform Polanco's 2024 season
With each passing day, it seems more and more likely that top prospect Christian Moore will win the opening-day second base job for the Halos. While Polanco may have been some nice competition for the youngster, he's not worth the rate the Mariners are paying him.
Moore tore up the minor leagues after being selected in the first round by the Halos last year, and although it was only a 25-game sample, Steamer already projects him to outproduce the numbers Polanco put up last season.
Moore's projected line is .248/.299/.392 and a 94 wRC+ with better defense than Polanco totaling a projected fWAR of 0.8. It should be noted that he's only projected to play in 60 games and log 259 plate appearances, so a full season's workload would increase the total even more. That 94 wRC+ is better than the 92 mark Polanco put up last year and the 0.8 fWAR is more than double the 0.3 fWAR Polanco produced.
This is a classic case of one player on the upswing while the other is on the decline, and Moore should be a better bet to outperform his projections than Polanco.
Here's the funny part for the Angels. The Mariners could have just picked up Polanco's option for a few million more this season and evaluated whether or not he could truly bounce back. Instead with this new deal, they've likely tied themselves to Polanco for the next two seasons if plate appearances is the only condition to make that option vest. That's something that seems likely given the dearth of other infield options on their roster.
Seattle was clearly hoping for an upgrade to present itself, and when it didn't they panicked and re-signed a player who is clearly on the decline and a poor fit for their ballpark. In the process, they eliminated a possible mistake for the Angels who can now sit back and watch their young stud flourish while their rivals to the north invested their precious limited funds in a declining asset. Too funny really!