2018 MLB Draft Guide Player Profile: Jorge Polanco

Jorge Polanco

Fantasy pioneer Ron Shandler has a draft strategy of taking a speed player and combining him with a power hitter to make a fantasy amalgamation in order to build a balanced team. It’s an interesting take on how to create a combination of steals with a player who hits home runs and drives in runs. However, many caught on to this, and while getting a player like Billy Hamilton can provide almost half of a drafting team’s stolen bases, his average and dearth of RBI can be a drag on other categories.

How can fantasy players avoid this trap and build a balanced roster without chasing steals, which continue to be in decline? Hybrids. Last year, 28 players hit at least 15 home runs with at least 15 stolen bases. Four missed the list by just one stolen base. The days of players stealing 100 bases in a season may be passing us by, but there’s a pocket of targets who can fill a roster with speed upside along with providing power.

One such player who will be vastly undervalued in preseason average draft position (ADP) plays for the Twins. No, it’s not Byron Buxton, whose helium in drafts continues to rise due to those banking on a player finally living up to his prospect hype. Instead, this will focus on Jorge Polanco, who never made the top of the Twins lists coming up through the system despite reaching the majors at the tender age of 20. After cratering last July with an average below .100, Polanco finished the second half with a surge. Many owners will look at his overall season and avoid him in drafts, but that will be a mistake.

Polanco finished last year with a .256/.313/.410 slash line with 60 runs, 13 home runs, 74 RBI and 13 stolen bases over 488 at-bats. During the first half, he hit a paltry .224/.273/.323 with only three home runs and six steals in 69 games. After the referenced cratering in July, Polanco’s continued work with hitting coach James Rowson started to come to fruition.

Rowson asked Polanco to improve upon his plate discipline and be less aggressive chasing pitches outside the strike zone to improve upon performance. At the point of this talk during a road trip to Los Angeles, Polanco cut his O-Swing (chase percentage of pitches outside the strike zone) from 31 percent to 22 percent to end the season. This resulted in Polanco’s O-Swing dropping from 33.5 percent in 2016 to 26.9 last year. Polanco also increased his contact by 2.5 percent and cut his swinging-strike percentage by 1.0.

Transitioning to his batted-ball data, there’s some interesting growth in his line-drive percentage following the All-Star break last year along with improvement of his home-run per flyball rate from 3.2 percent in the first half to 12.5 in the second. Polanco also stopped pulling the ball so much, and along with the improved discipline, it engaged his power. He finished ninth in RBI for shortstops last year, one behind Javy Baez who will be selected higher on average. Polanco fell to the 19th round in a recent 15-team, industry slow mock

Using his second half solely to project for 2018 would be inaccurate and short sighted. However, Polanco did provide 13 home runs and 13 steals for the Twins in only 133 games with a major step forward in his underlying statistics. That could translate to an increase of his totals in 2018. Pay for 70 runs, 15 home runs and 15 steals with 75 RBI and a .265 average. Profit from each category he supersedes in the year ahead. If the walk rates from August (6.6 percent) and September (9.8 percent) hold, waiting at shortstop for Polanco in drafts is a winning proposition for the year ahead. Especially for a player who will turn just 25 in July. 

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