Mets' Jorge Polanco says learning first base is harder than expected
Mets first baseman Jorge Polanco during a spring training simulated game on Thursday in Port St. Luice, Fla. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.— Jorge Polanco laughs when he’s asked if playing first base is harder or easier than he expected.
“That’s a really good question,” the Mets’ converted middle infielder said Thursday. “Everybody says first base is easy but it’s harder than what you would expect — it’s harder than what people expect, you know? But this is the perfect time to get ready.”
About 40 miles away in West Palm Beach, the Mets were getting set to play the Astros in a spring training game, but at Clover Park, something arguably more important was happening. In an effort to spell some players with heightened injury risks, manager Carlos Mendoza has so far avoided playing Polanco, Brett Baty, Luis Robert Jr. and Francisco Alvarez in the field.
So Thursday’s simulation game marked the first time Polanco and Baty have manned first base this spring. They corralled high throws, held runners on, and generally got a feel for the speed of the game when playing one of its most active positions.
It’s a transition the Mets very much want both of them to make. With Bo Bichette anchored at third and Marcus Semien at second, Baty’s only real playing options are rightfield, first base and designated hitter. Polanco, a career shortstop with exactly one out of experience at first, can either play there or DH. And the Mets need both their bats, particularly if Baty keeps up the offensive production that turned him into an everyday player in the second half of last season. Polanco, a postseason hero with the Mariners last year, wasted no time showing what he could do Thursday, either — homering against Brandon Waddell in his first sim game at-bat.
After, Polanco said that he consulted with Carlos Santana, who won his first Gold Glove at first base in 2024, when he was 38 years old.
“It’s a little bit different at the beginning,” Polanco said of manning the position. “But it feels great. I feel like I’m in the right spot — like, getting to the base and doing all that kind of stuff . . . As I start working on it and get more reps, I think I’m going to be more comfortable.”
Bench coach Kai Correa, who’s been working extensively to get Polanco up to speed, said that adopting a completely new position — as opposed to trying to improve at a position you’ve been playing your whole career — can have its benefits.
“You get the pro and con from changing,” he told Newsday. “The pro would be the fresh exposure. You have (fewer) habits on the bookshelf, so therefore you don’t have bad ones. You’re starting from the ground up. The con would be, you don’t have anything to refer to. It’s individual to individual. Some athletes, when they move positions, that positional change is enough. It’s a fresh start to jump start success. For others, it’s a slower process but it does create a clean opportunity to learn things, both positionally and technically.”
And despite the long history of athletes transitioning to first base in the waning years of their career, the position — its difficulty and its importance — shouldn't be discounted.
Pete Alonso was, metrically, a defensively inferior first baseman, “but he was very good at picking the ball out of the dirt, the bad throws in the dirt” said Keith Hernandez, winner of 11 consecutive gold gloves. “We’ll see how Polanco does at that because if the infielders lose confidence in the first baseman if they make an errant throw, then . . . they start tightening up. That is something to watch.”
Regardless, it’s still early in the process. Though he doesn’t know the “ideal” number of games it will take for the position to feel more natural, Polanco is confident.
“I’m ready to play right now,” he said. “But we have a plan that we’ve got to follow together and that’s going to be for my best (interest). I’m waiting on them.”
Mostly, “it’s the mental things,” he added. “Be ready every pitch, every play that they make . . . try to (stay) loose, try to go to the base. That’s my first thought. When you catch a ground ball, you’ve got to go right away to the base and then, if you have no chance, you want to make the throw to the pitcher. Things like that.”
McLean gearing up
Nolan McLean threw four scoreless innings in his first spring training start, allowing a hit with a walk and six strikeouts — a warmup as he prepares to compete for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic next week. McLean last week said he would likely be used in a “piggybacking role.”
He added that the WBC hasn’t really changed his schedule.
“I’m pretty much the same as what I would have been with or without the WBC,” McLean said. “We might’ve moved one day up just to line up for my starts there but it’s pretty much the exact (same) as it would have been but just pitching in a different environment.”
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
