Minnesota Twins hope Jorge Polanco follows a familiar pattern

Through games of May 6, Jorge Polanco of the Minnesota Twins was slashing just .211/.309/.326. However, a 3-for-4 day (including a solo home run) on Saturday against the Oakland A’s certainly helped boost those numbers.

After Saturday’s statistics, is it possible that, as Yogi Berra once said, it will be “deja vu all over again” for Polanco and the Minnesota Twins?

Could Saturday’s big day set the stage for a familiar recent pattern for Jorge Polanco of the Minnesota Twins?

Last season, on May 6, Polanco was slashing just .206/.272/.304 for the Twins. However, a May 7 outburst where Polanco went 2-for-3 (with a solo home run as well) started to turn those numbers around. The 28-year-old infielder would go on to finish the season with a .269/.323/.503 slash line. That includes a stretch in June, July, and August where Polanco would not hit below .290 in any month.

Saturday was Polanco’s first three-hit game of 2022 and finished just a triple shy of a cycle (h/t to this tweet from @OakTreeStatus). His solo home run (which traveled 451 feet and had an exit velocity of 106.9 mph) with two outs in the sixth inning was the difference in Minnesota’s 1-0 home win.

Could Polanco be following his “wait until May 7” playbook from 2021? Minnesota fans certainly hope so as the Twins are on top of the American League Central with a 17-11 mark and have played well while Polanco has struggled in his first 99 at-bats of the season.

Polanco’s potential reemergence would be a boost to the Twins, who have already lived a charmed life this season with both Byron Buxton (knee) and Carlos Correa (finger) avoiding major injuries in moments that looked, at first, worse than they turned out. If Polanco continues to heat up at the plate, it would also follow a career-long pattern where he has been just a career .244 hitter in March and April, but saw that average rise to .294 in May and stay as high as .306 in the month of August.

Will Polanco’s 2022 at the plate follow what he did in 2021? For one game at least, the odds certainly seem possible.