Jorge Polanco’s late-season surge was a huge reason why the Twins finished strong and outlasted the other contenders for the final AL Wild Card in 2017. But where did that sudden and impressive outburst come from and is there any hope of it continuing in 2018?

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From August on, Polanco hit .316/.377/.553 (.931 OPS), but we know he’s not that good. Few hitters are. His emergence helped the Twins finish out the season on a 35-24 run. That would be a 96-win pace over the course of a full season. A good Polanco makes this Twins lineup terrifying.Polanco can really handle a bat. He ranked 13th among qualified hitters with a contact percentage of 86.5. He also made an adjustment as the year went on to swing at fewer pitches. Below is a graph that shows Polanco’s month-by-month swing percentage. Also included is the Twins swing rate as a team for reference.As you can see, that excellent season-end stretch for Polanco also coincided with a greatly-reduced swing rate. He also kept his contact rate well above average over that span. Here’s a similar graph that shows month-by-month contact percentages.Hitters have very little control in the grand scheme of things. You can try to look for a certain pitch or a certain location, but there’s no guarantee the pitcher’s going to throw anything you’re hunting. And even when you hit one on the screws, it could be right at a fielder.Polanco appears to have plus bat-handling skills and is already making adjustments to his approach. Those are two things he can control.A lot of data out there suggests Polanco’s success was on the fluky side. From August on, he had one of the lowest marks in xwOBA-wOBA at -.088 (.300-.388). A big reason behind that is his average exit velocity was 84.4 mph, which ranked 190th of the 212-hitter sample I pulled up over that span.That’s a long and fancy way of saying that it appears several of his hits over than hot streak would typically have been outs under normal circumstances. Plus, if Polanco maintains his lower swing rate, we can expect pitchers will adjust to him adjusting … and then he’s going to need to adjust to them adjusting to his adjustment.Polanco maintained a swing rate under 41 percent while keeping his contact rate over 84 percent during the final two months of the season and still slugged over .550. Do you know how many hitters managed to do that over the course of the season?Zero.There were six guys who had the swing/contact rates covered: Mookie Betts, Zack Cozart, Brett Gardner, Nick Markakis, Anthony Rendon and, you guessed it, Joe Mauer. Cozart came the closest to replicating the power, slugging .548. Rendon wasn’t too far behind at .533.But slugging .550 is insane. Only 12 qualified hitters managed to do that last year. So, circling back to where we started, Polanco’s not going to be that good.How good will Polanco be? That’s anybody’s guess, but his skills multiplied by his ability to adjust plus the presence James Rowson and “Paulie3K” Molitor equals a lot of reasons for Twins fans to be excited about Jorge Polanco heading into 2018.RELATED: Hard Work Jorge Pays Off