'It's paying off': Polanco's power surge continues with two-HR night

CHICAGO -- The Mariners’ prized Trade Deadline acquisition joined them on Saturday afternoon at Guaranteed Rate Field, but it was their most prominent offseason addition who wound up stealing the show in a 6-3 victory a few hours later.

Randy Arozarena went 1-for-4 with an infield single and a walk in his Seattle debut while putting together a few quality at-bats even with two strikeouts in his final line. Jorge Polanco, meanwhile, finished with a season-high three hits that included a pair of emphatic homers, one night after blasting one in Friday’s 10-run rout, perhaps a sign that the struggling second baseman has finally turned a corner.

“He has risen,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “It's a credit to him because the first half was really rough. He took a little break there for a couple days. He made some adjustments. And this is the guy that I think we all expected.”

Polanco’s two homers on Saturday were no cheapies. The first left his bat at 107.9 mph and traveled 426 feet, way beyond the wall in straightaway center field. The second he pulled 110.7 mph and 382 feet deep into the right-field bleachers -- stopping, staring and smiling before beginning his trot.

For good measure, Polanco ripped a 105.7 mph, run-scoring single that plated Arozarena in the eighth. And each of his three knocks were with two strikes.

“I'm on time with the fastball right now,” Polanco said. “The beginning of the season, I wasn't too much. But I've been working on things, trying to be consistent on things, and it's paying off.”

Polanco’s demeanor throughout this weekend’s series has been reflective of a player feeling -- and looking -- more at ease.

In the nearly three weeks since Seattle’s deflating July 7 loss to Toronto, when he was loudly booed by the T-Mobile Park crowd and his status with the Mariners appeared to be legitimately in question, he’s slashing .278/.339/.537 (.876 OPS) with four of his eight homers on the season. Prior, he was hitting .189 with a .564 OPS.

Polanco is hitting the ball harder (a rise in average exit velocity from 86.8 mph to 91.2 mph in this stretch), making more consistent contact (a drop in whiff rate from 31.4% to 20.8%), getting the ball in the air more (a drop in ground-ball rate from 38.1% to 28.9%) and striking out less (a dip in K rate from 33.6% to 20.3%).

Basically, he’s looked much more like the player he was over 10 successful seasons in Minnesota -- one that Seattle’s front office was banking on being a key contributor when it centered its offseason personnel overhaul around him after a Jan. 29 trade.

Polanco says the improvements are more centered on approach rather than mechanics, with help from personal hitting coach Osvaldo Diaz, who also works with Julio Rodríguez and was in Seattle earlier this month.

“Approach is a lot of stuff,” Polanco said. “It's how you stand at the plate, what you think, what you look for, all of those kinds of things. It's helping right now, but we've got to keep working on it.”

Cal Raleigh also went deep with his 21st of the year and preceded Polanco’s second, marking the second straight day that the Mariners went back-to-back. It was the first time that the club hit back-to-back homers in back-to-back games since Sept. 17, 2019 (Omar Narváez and Austin Nola) and Sept. 18, 2019 (Kyle Lewis, Tom Murphy).

With the win, the Mariners secured their second series victory on the road since June 6, with their lone series win in that period being a two-game sweep of the Padres on July 9-10. They also handed the White Sox their 13th straight loss.

It wasn’t all easy, as Gregory Santos -- pitching for the first time since exiting with a right knee injury on Wednesday -- put the club on the cusp of the precarious, loading the bases against his former club in the eighth. That brought Luis Robert Jr. to the plate and forced Mariners manager Scott Servais to turn to Andrés Muñoz to escape the jam, which he did via a strikeout, but only after a wild pitch that allowed a run to score.

Bryan Woo also reaggravated the right hamstring that landed him on the 15-day injured list last month and departed after just four innings and 70 pitches, though he and the Mariners believe that he’ll make his next start, which would be next Friday back in Seattle.