Jorge Polanco is on fire lately, and it has emphasized just how special a season the Seattle Mariners' switch-hitter is having.
By one measure, he's the eighth-most valuable hitter in all of MLB this season, and the seven guys ahead of him are all absolute stars.
The statistic that gets us to that conclusion is Win Probability Added. Every action on a baseball field impacts the possibility of a team scoring a run, and every change in the possibility of a run also is a fractional change in the chances of getting a win.
WPA combines all those individual events into a catch-all stat that basically summarizes how impactful a player has been toward winning.
Polanco has a WPA of 3.61, which is eighth among all qualified hitters, according to the Baseball Unstitched Podcast.
The seven ahead of Polanco:
- Shohei Ohtani
- Juan Soto
- Aaron Judge
- Freddie Freeman
- Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
- Cal Raleigh
- Bo Bichette
Amazingly, Polanco isn't even the best switch-hitter on his own team, with Raleigh ahead of him here. But it does mean Polanco has been the second-best switch-hitter in baseball.
Polanco enters Tuesday night on a 12-game hitting streak, and the Mariners have a 0.5-game lead on the Houston Astros in the AL West.
If Polanco can just keep his clutch bat going for the next couple weeks, the Mariners can win a division title.
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