Remember the early days of the 2025 season, when Jorge Polanco was the Seattle Mariners’ best hitter by a country mile, highlighted by a .384 batting average, 1.226 OPS and 246 wRC+ at the end of April?
Well … since then things have not exactly gone too well for Polanco and, by extension president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, who at one point must have believed this was the ultimate vindication of his approach to building a successful roster.
Since May 1, Polanco has been one of the worst hitters in all of baseball among qualifying players. (Be warned, this isn’t for the faint-hearted.) He’s ranked fourth-worst in the majors with a 49 wRC+ and third-worst with a .183 batting average, as well as second-worst with both a .503 OPS and -0.9 WAR.
Jorge Polanco’s spectacular fall from grace
As a result, Polanco has gone from being on course for the best season of his career to now being projected to have one of the poorer campaigns of his 12-years in the majors. For example, his .248 batting average would the third-lowest of his time in baseball, his .302 OBP would be second-lowest and his .321 rOBA would be fourth-lowest.
Not helping Polanco is an ongoing issue with his left knee, even after undergoing offseason surgery to repair the patellar tendon. He’s been limited to 67 out of the Mariners’ first 84 games of this season and the majority of his starts (48) have come at DH. Even now, the knee is still bothering him.
Jorge Polanco is out of the lineup again today because of a sore left knee, same one he had surgically repaired last fall. He’s available off the bench and expected back in the lineup tomorrow.
— Adam Jude (@A_Jude) June 30, 2025
Adam Jude of The Seattle Times also noted that Polanco met with his surgeon in Dallas over the weekend, who gave him clearance to play. However, the offseason surgery clearly hasn’t entirely resolved the knee problem and it just seems as if this is something which will continue to linger for the remainder of the season.
The bottom line is that Polanco is becoming an unplayable liability, with the Mariners also needing to consider the financial ramifications of this situation. Already being paid a guaranteed $7.75 million for this season, there’s also the specter of performance bonuses hanging over the head of the organization.
Mariners on the hook for up to another $3.5 million
Currently sitting on 249 plate appearances this season, Polanco will start receiving $500K performance bonuses once he reaches 300 plate appearances and for every additional 50 plate appearances between then and 600. Put another way, he could be in line to make an extra $3.5 million in 2025.
Of course the Mariners would have no issue paying this money if Polanco was hitting like he did earlier in the season. Heck, it probably wouldn’t even sting that much if he was close to his career averages. But based on his current form, why waste the extra money on subpar hitting?
The main thing working in Polanco’s favor at the moment is that there are other Mariners similarly hitting below what they’re capable of, but even this is cancelled out by his lingering knee issue and pending performance bonuses. It will be interesting to see how this pans out in the coming weeks, with the final note that the potential additional $3.5 million could be put to better use at the upcoming July 31 trade deadline.
