The Mariners struck gold with last winter’s re-signing of Jorge Polanco on a $6MM free agent deal. They attributed his down 2024 season to a knee injury that had required postseason meniscus surgery. The switch-hitting infielder rewarded their faith by connecting on 26 home runs with a .265/.326/.495 slash across 524 plate appearances.
Polanco has certainly put himself in position for a more lucrative trip this time around. Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times reports that his representatives at Octagon are pursing a three- or four-year deal that pays upwards of $12MM. That’s roughly in line with the three-year, $42MM prediction which MLBTR put in ranking Polanco the #23 free agent of the offseason. ESPN’s Jesse Rogers writes that he could sign during the Winter Meetings.
It remains to be seen whether any team will meet that ask. The Mariners have spoken openly about their desire to bring Polanco back. Divish writes that a three-year guarantee may be beyond the team’s comfort zone, however. According to Divish, the club would rather limit the commitment to two years — potentially with a mutual or vesting option for 2028.
A straightforward mutual option wouldn’t move the needle much from Polanco’s perspective. Mutual options are essentially never exercised, as their purpose is to allow the team to delay the payment of a portion of the contract. (Rather than evenly distributing the money over the course of a season as salary, the option buyout is paid as a lump sum after the end of the World Series.) A vesting option comes with more upside than a mutual option would, but it requires him to stay healthy and hit certain playing time benchmarks. That’s no small caveat, especially for a player with Polanco’s injury history. His camp would obviously prefer to get the extra year fully guaranteed.
There are reasons for the M’s to be wary of a three-year commitment. Polanco turns 33 next July. The knee issues limited him to primary designated hitter work for the majority of the season. The M’s used him more frequently at second base in September and headed into the postseason. He only started 39 regular season games on defense, though, and the positional questions won’t go away as he gets into his mid-30s.
“I can’t tell you whether or not we will wind up being the team that reels him in,” president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said of Polanco’s market (via Divish). “But we have to spread a wider net than that. With the more likely reality is that you wind up somewhere else, moving in a different direction, because that’s just the odds. But we’ll engage, and we will remain connected to him. He was an important player for us, and I don’t think that has changed.”
Polanco has been mentioned as a possibility for a Pirates team that is willing to be more aggressive in free agency to improve the lineup. There aren’t a ton of free agent alternatives at second base. Ha-Seong Kim could command a similar contract to Polanco and might sign as a shortstop. Luis Rengifo and Willi Castro are reclamation targets. The third base market is a little deeper. Alex Bregman tops the group, while Eugenio Suárez and NPB slugger Kazuma Okamoto are in the middle tiers. Yoán Moncada and Ramón Urías should be available on one-year deals, while KBO infielder Sung-mun Song is available via the posting system.