The chants from left field were clear.
“D-F-A!” said the crowd in the rhythm of a “U-S-A” chant. “D-F-A!”
Gregory Polanco had just misplayed a David Peralta base hit to right, with the ground ball going under his glove and roll towards the wall. What should have been a basic single had a two base error attached, allowing the tying run to score from first base. The Pirates would end up losing to Diamondbacks Wednesday night.
The few in attendance at PNC Park sitting in the bleachers let their displeasure known.
It was the latest entry in a long list of frustrations for the veteran right fielder.
“I know I’m not playing great, but I’m trying,” Polanco said on the field at PNC Park pregame Thursday. “… I’m playing my ass off every day.”
It has been a trying week for Polanco. On Sunday, news broke that he had been placed on outright waivers, a process that is usually confidential. No team put in a claim for him, and after two days of speculation, he remained with the team.
And he has remained in the starting lineup, even though he is slashing just .203/.279/.345 and being worth -1.5 rWAR. This comes after struggling in abbreviated 2019 and 2020 seasons, the former from when he was recovering from left shoulder surgery. Over the last two seasons, Polanco’s 2.5 rWAR is the worst among all position players. Despite that, he has played 105 games this season.
“It’s my decision,” Derek Shelton said when asked why Polanco has remained a starter. “He had two hits last night. It’s my decision to put him in the lineup against [Miles] Mikolas, a lefty. I know last night he made an error, but he’s played well defensively. I think that would be the easiest answer for you guys.”
Polanco is starting in right field and batting sixth for the Pirates Thursday in their game against the Cardinals.
If Polanco gets heckled, odds are he’ll probably hear it. The announced attendance for Wednesday night's crowd was 8,357, but the actual number of people in the seats appeared to be no more than a few thousand.
“There are only like 5,000 people there,” Polanco said. “You hear everything.”
Earlier this month, Polanco expressed that he “would never want to leave Pittsburgh,” and even amid his three minute, 20 second meeting with the media Thursday, made sure to express his gratitude to the fans.
But the calls for him to be let go hurt.
“That’s not nice to hear that,” Polanco said. “ ‘Release him! DFA him! Send him back!’ They don’t understand. They don’t know how hard it is. I’m doing 100% every day to get better. This has been a hard year for me. This is my free agent year. I want to do better. I want to do good. I want to keep playing baseball until I can’t. I don’t want to retire. I don’t want to be home. I want to be on the baseball field. This is what I love. They don’t understand, and that sucks.”
Shelton has heard those calls as well, but it hasn’t swayed his decision to continue to start him.
“People are going to have their opinions. Fans are going to have their opinions. I appreciate that, and I appreciate their passion,” Shelton said. “Like I’ve told you guys numerous times, the issue I would have with Gregory or any player on our team would be effort. I would be hard-pressed for anybody on this Zoom or anybody who’s watched us play to say that he has not had extremely good effort all year long.”
Polanco talked about taking 300 swings a day to try to get his swing back. Trying to be the player that the Pirates hoped he would be. That work hasn't translated into games, though.
Ben Cherington gives Shelton control of the lineup card, but has also recently reaffirmed his support of Polanco.
"I think we have felt, and still feel to this point, that he's a really talented player that's still not that old and we think finally healthy,” Cherington said earlier this month. “We think [he's] still capable of being a good major league player. We're not blind to the performance. He is, if you think about the last couple years for Gregory, whether it was injuries or the short season, up until this year, he just simply didn't play a lot of baseball for a while. So I think we've had some desire to give him every chance to play a lot of baseball and find himself again.”
Polanco is in the final guaranteed year of a five-year, $35 million deal he signed in 2016. It is virtually guaranteed that the Pirates will choose to pay the $3 million buyout on his 2022 club option rather than keep him on the roster, severing ties with the Pirates’ longest tenured player and their last link to the 2014 and 2015 playoff teams.
With 35 games remaining in the 2021 season, Polanco will almost certainly hear some boos again at some point before the year is through.
“I try to keep it out of my mind, even though it’s hard not to when you’re playing,” Polanco said.
