TORONTO — From time to time within the Seattle Mariners clubhouse, the “Top Gun Anthem,” filled with hovering guitar notes and pick-me-up vibes, will randomly blast from inside a locker. Everybody is aware of the wrongdoer. Jorge Polanco, the Mariners’ veteran second baseman, isn’t a fan of silencing his cellphone.
“But he loves Maverick and Iceman,” Mariners star Cal Raleigh mentioned.
No person actually minds. When a participant is doing what Polanco has completed this postseason — rescuing the Mariners from the hazard zone seemingly every day, together with his newest trick a go-ahead three-run house run that paved the way in which for Monday’s 10-3 victory — his ringtone might be Limp Bizkit and no one would utter a peep.
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As a substitute, it’s the proper soundtrack for this Mariners run, which presently sees them up two video games to none towards the Toronto Blue Jays within the American League Championship Collection. The “Top Gun Anthem” is an epic ballad crammed with the types of ups and downs that personify a company that has spent 49 years alternating among the many desolation of mediocrity and the heartbreak of underachievement. The one workforce in Main League Baseball to by no means to play in a World Collection, Seattle is 2 wins away from capturing its first American League pennant and is heading house to T-Cellular Park for Sport 3.
The Mariners’ dominant place is largely due to a 32-year-old infielder whose feats have earned him the best to be known as Iceman himself — and but that’s not the nickname Polanco wears nowadays.
“He’s George Bonds,” M’s catcher Mitch Garver mentioned.
Sure, Polanco’s alter ego is the anglicized model of his first title and the surname of Main League Baseball’s all-time house run chief. He earned it earlier this season, Garver mentioned, when “everything he hit was 110 [mph] in a gap or over the fence. It was unbelievable.”
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Notably when contemplating that final winter, Polanco didn’t know whether or not he could be wholesome sufficient to maintain hitting main league pitching. Polanco, who had struggled for years with left knee points, underwent surgical procedure in October 2024 to restore his patellar tendon. A free agent, Polanco drew restricted curiosity available on the market and wound up re-signing with the Mariners for one 12 months and $7.75 million.
“It’s been a journey, man,” Polanco mentioned. “That’s the way in which I can put it. I wouldn’t say it’s been unhealthy. I wouldn’t say it’s been simple. I feel God simply ready me for this 12 months. I’ve been damage a little bit bit, so yeah; however now we right here, and I’m glad to be again.
“You just have to have faith. You overcome. Come back stronger.”
Polanco’s power has been on show all October. It first appeared within the second recreation of Seattle’s division collection towards the Detroit Tigers when he hit two house runs off ace Tarik Skubal, who’s about to win his second consecutive Cy Younger Award. It continued three video games later in a winner-takes-all Sport 5 when he lashed a single into proper area within the fifteenth inning that superior the Mariners to their first ALCS since 2001. It didn’t cease there, with Polanco’s go-ahead single within the sixth inning of Sport 1 towards the Blue Jays on Sunday.
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Then got here Monday’s fifth-inning blast off Toronto reliever Louis Varland, who fed a 98 mph fastball over the plate and watched it go away the bat at 105.2 mph, flying 400 toes to show a 3-3 tie right into a 6-3 Seattle lead.
“He’s always been a great hitter,” Mariners supervisor Dan Wilson mentioned. “His swing right now is very short. That ball tonight, I wasn’t sure it was going to go out of the ballpark, but I think he’s just getting that kind of spin on it right now where it stays up.”
That’s no accident. Polanco arrived within the main leagues with the Minnesota Twins in 2014 at age 20, a bat-to-ball savant whose means to hit from each side of the plate carved him out an everyday function with the workforce.
“He wasn’t George Bonds before,” Garver mentioned. “He was Harry Potter. Because he was a wizard. He’d just make hits appear.”
Polanco discovered energy 5 years into his profession, and he maxed out with 33 house runs for the Twins in 2021. However the degradation of his knee sapped the juice in his bat and left him flailing too typically at pitches he’d have beforehand spit on. Final 12 months, in his first season with the Mariners, his numbers cratered, however the group appreciated Polanco’s even-keeled demeanor and believed fixing his knee would repair his swing too.
The Mariners have been proper. George Bonds was born throughout a ridiculous first month of the 2025 season when he whacked 9 homers in 80 plate appearances. Polanco had embraced the M’s ethos of pulling the ball within the air. Raleigh led MLB with a 1.594 OPS on balls pulled. Third baseman Eugenio Suarez was second at 1.497. Polanco hit 23 of his 26 house runs this season to the pull aspect, and each of his homers off Skubal (hit from the best aspect) and the one towards Varland (left) have been met in entrance of the plate and yanked over the fence.
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“Throughout the years, I hated going to Minnesota just solely because of him,” mentioned shortstop J.P. Crawford, the longest-tenured Mariner. “The guy single-handedly beat us so many times. We all know the type of player he is when he is healthy, and it’s clearly showing right now.”
By no means within the recreation’s 150-year historical past had a participant logged three consecutive game-winning hits within the fifth inning or later through the postseason. It’s the form of efficiency groups must win pennants — and championships. As sensible as Raleigh has been in a could-be-MVP marketing campaign and as conflagrant as Julio Rodriguez was within the second half and as dominant as Seattle’s pitching has been en route up to now, profitable playoff baseball takes extra.
Like, say, a man who over the winter was an afterthought now hitting cleanup and by no means wavering, even within the highest-leverage conditions.
“What’s most impressive is bouncing back after a rough year last year,” mentioned Seattle pitcher Bryan Woo, who’s lined as much as begin a possible Sport 5 on Friday. “Especially for a guy on his second team, back half of his career. To do what he’s doing — get healthy, come back, help the team like he has — is even more impressive than just playing good baseball.”
Taking part in good baseball helps too. Polanco has helped get Seattle in a spot that hardly a month in the past seemed inconceivable to conceive. From mid-August to early September, the Mariners misplaced 13 of 18, trailed the Houston Astros by 3½ video games within the AL West and held a half-game lead on the Texas Rangers for the ultimate wild-card spot. From there, the M’s went 17-4, gained the West, earned a first-round bye and charted a course for historical past.
They’re not there. And but even Polanco admitted that Seattle gamers can’t ignore the workforce’s historical past and acknowledge what it might imply to get to the World Collection.
“Yeah, we think about it,” he mentioned. “We’ve heard it a lot. We know.”
The information hasn’t deterred them. Raleigh is raking. Rodriguez is slugging. Josh Naylor, who grew up in close by Mississauga, Ontario, blasted a two-run house run in Sport 2 of the ALCS. And George Bonds has proven up in fashion, chilly as Iceman, cool as Maverick, completely joyful to eschew silent mode in favor of loud contact.
