Jorge Polanco is challenging even Mariners legends amid epic hot streak

When Jorge Polanco re-signed back in February, the general attitude among Seattle Mariners fans was that the offense needed something more ample. More Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martínez and less, well, him.

It turns out that the joke's on the fans, though that's not to suggest they're disliking how the 31-year-old Polanco has been swinging the bat.

His fingerprints are all over the Mariners' 17-12 start to the 2025 season, as he began the year with a game-winning home run and has just kept coming up with big hit after big hit. So it went on Tuesday, wherein he homered twice (and narrowly missed a third homer) and drove in all five runs in Seattle's 5-3 win over the Los Angeles Angels.

The company Polanco is keeping includes some of the greatest hitters in Mariners history

Mariners fans had every right to be skeptical when Polanco re-upped on a one-year, $7.75 million deal. He had only posted a .651 OPS in 118 games with Seattle in 2024, promptly having knee surgery at the start of the offseason.

It was nonetheless evident as Polanco was putting up a .940 OPS in spring training that something was different, and he isn't merely feeling as good as he's ever felt. As he said after Tuesday's win, per Daniel Kramer of MLB.com: “It's been a really good stretch, really fun. I think this is the best I’ve felt.”

As far as how hot Polanco is, it perhaps says enough that he leads all hitters (minimum 70 plate appearances) with a .819 slugging percentage, 1.243 OPS and a 258 wRC+. The hitter just below him in all three categories is two-time American League MVP Aaron Judge, who, like Polanco, also has nine home runs.

Where Mariners history is concerned, well, let's have a little fun with Baseball Reference's Stathead tool.

Polanco's .819 SLG is the highest in team history through the first 29 games of a season, barely edging the .809 SLG that Griffey had at the outset of his MVP-winning season in 1997. Otherwise, the 1.254 OPS that Griffey had at that time barely edges the 1.243 OPS that Polanco has now.

If you only look at Polanco's last six games, you'll see him with a 2.083 OPS. That is the fifth-best OPS for a six-game span in Mariners history, trailing one stint by Griffey in 1994 (2.155) and three separate stints by Martínez in 1996 (2.160 and 2.135) and 1997 (2.092).

Ah, but neither Griffey nor Martínez ever had a six-game span in which they homered six times and drove in 13 runs. Polanco is on such a run right now, and it's a level of hotness that had previously been known to only one Mariner: Jay Buhner in 1995.

Griffey? Martínez? Buhner? If a Mariners hitter is rubbing shoulders with these guys, he's clearly doing something right.

There is the question of how long this can last, and the obvious answer is "not forever." Polanco has been an All-Star-caliber hitter for much of his career, but he's not, you know, Barry Bonds. Regression is going to hit him eventually, and it'll likely hit him hard.

Yet this is also a wholly abstract concept. Polanco has not been lucking into results, as his Baseball Savant page is a veritable sea of red that includes 100th percentile marks for expected batting average and expected slugging percentage. The rake is real, as it were.

Besides, nobody's asking him to carry the Mariners all season. It may be good enough that he's carried them this far, as the likes of Julio Rodríguez and Randy Arozarena are standing there to take up the baton and keep the Mariners' surprising offense super-charged to the end.

For the meantime, Polanco's hotness is for the Mariners to enjoy and for other teams to get burned by.