Jorge Polanco out of Mets’ lineup again with Juan Soto needing to DH

Jorge Polanco signed with the Mets to play, not to watch. Instead he’s glued to the bench for a second straight game because Juan Soto, the $765 million man, needs the DH slot to nurse whatever’s bothering him. That’s the reality of building a roster around one enormous contract: everybody else’s playing time bends to protect the investment, whether the front office says so out loud or not.

Nobody’s knocking the precaution itself. If Soto needs a couple of DH days to stay right for the stretch run, fine, that’s just smart asset management. But it exposes a real problem with how this roster was built. The Mets paid real money this winter to add depth and versatility, and now that depth has nowhere to go because there's only one DH spot and it belongs, by default, to the guy making more than some small countries' GDP. Polanco isn't a bench player by design. He's a bench player because the math around him doesn't work when the superstar needs a soft landing spot.

This is what happens when a front office spends big on a singular name instead of building a lineup that has actual give in it. Fans were sold on “championship depth” over the winter. What they’re getting is a game of musical chairs where the guy who signed for real dollars keeps losing the seat. Soto is going to be fine, and the Mets are going to win plenty of games with him in right field instead of DH. The larger question is whether ownership actually built a roster that can flex around its biggest star, or whether they just assumed talent alone would sort out the logistics.

Baseball is a long season, and lineup cards get rewritten every week. But this early pattern is worth watching. You don't build a contender by benching the guy you paid to play. If Polanco keeps riding the pine every time Soto needs a breather, that's not a precaution anymore, it's a roster flaw that somebody in Queens is going to have to actually solve.