Jorge Polanco’s season with the New York Mets has already turned into another fight with his body. The switch-hitting infielder has been dealing with Achilles tendinitis early this season and has been in and out of the lineup.
That is a familiar pattern for Polanco, who had similar injury trouble during his first season with the Seattle Mariners in 2024. He finished that year with a 92 OPS+ and 1.3 rWAR, numbers that reflected a useful but uneven campaign after the Mariners acquired him.
For a stretch in 2024, Polanco looked like the kind of middle-of-the-order bat Seattle had hoped for. In March and April, he hit.384/.418/.808 with nine home runs in 22 games and helped carry the Mariners to the ALCS. But the production came amid a season shaped by injury issues, and the Mariners later returned him in 2025 expecting him to play third base while knee problems limited his ability to field.
The Mets gave Polanco a two-year, $40 million deal, and the Mariners did not match it. Seattle wanted him back on a short-term contract, but the front office’s restraint came after a season in which injury concerns likely weighed on its thinking. The Mariners also opened this season generally healthy, with few injuries and no major nagging concerns of their own, a contrast that may have made the decision easier.
That leaves Polanco in a familiar place: productive when available, but hard to project over the length of a season. The question now is not whether he can still hit. It is whether the Mets can keep him on the field long enough for that bat to matter.
