With Austin Meadows gone, pressure is on Gregory Polanco to keep rolling

With the Pittsburgh Pirates surprising everyone at the trade deadline by acquiring Keone Kela and Chris Archer, the excitement surrounding the team is perhaps the highest it’s been since October 2015. With increased enthusiasm comes raised expectations, and the two trades mean that those who were on the team before the acquisitions have more pressure on them to step it up, none more so than right fielder Gregory Polanco.

After debuting with much fanfare four years ago, Polanco has yet to become the superstar that the baseball world thought he could be, or even a star of any kind. He has shown flashes of brilliance in the big leagues, but Polanco hasn’t found a consistent, long-term rhythm yet, and as a result, his career to this point has been average. Nothing more, nothing less.

For the first two and a half months of this season, Polanco looked like he was leaving the ranks of “underachiever” and instead heading into bust territory. Through April and May, Polanco was struggling to keep his average over the Mendoza Line, all the while playing horrendous defense.

Over the past two months, however, Polanco has caught fire, raising his average over 50 points and having an OPS over 1.000 in that time. It’s clear that the team is still confident that he can perform.

Neal Huntington affirmed his faith, by dealing rookie outfielder Austin Meadows, essentially assuring that Polanco and Corey Dickerson are in the team’s long-term plans. The success that the Pirates outfield has had recently made Meadows more expendable than other top prospects Mitch Keller and Ke’Bryan Hayes. 

The fact that the Pirates trust their right fielder is a good thing for many reasons and is indicative of Polanco’s progress since the beginning of June. But we’ve seen instances where Polanco has been on fire for upwards of two months (think the beginning of 2016), before cooling off for equally as long.

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If El Coffee can’t keep this momentum going through the dog days of August and September,  it would not only hurt the team on the field, but it could make the decision to trade Meadows look like a costly one, which of course also depends on whether or not Archer does his part.

The main person who needs to deliver in the aftermath of the Archer trade is, obviously,  Archer himself. But due to losing Meadows, the Pirates outfield of Polanco, Dickerson and Starling Marte are right behind Archer, and they will need to put any doubts that Huntington may have overpayed for Archer to rest. While Marte and Dickerson are both equally vital to the Pirates success as Polanco is, both of those guys are established, and more than once, have managed to “put it together” for a full season. For now, Polanco hasn’t managed to do that.

Like the Pittsburgh Pirates collectively, Polanco is rolling, and is a big reason why the Bucs have won 16 of their last 21 games to put themselves in a position to make those trades. But we’ve seen this guy get hot before and not be able to sustain it. Hopefully, this time, it isn’t a tease.