Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports
All Mets fans know that Pete Alonso is one of the biggest sluggers in baseball. As the questions at Jeff McNeil‘s introductory press conference suggested, signing Alonso to a contract extension must now be a top priority for Steve Cohen and Billy Eppler. If McNeil is a homegrown Met star, Alonso is a homegrown Met superstar.
Alonso has had his ups and downs just like any other hitter. Before you know it, though, the end of the season comes and he has around 40 homers and an OPS of .850 or above. Mets fans love to criticize him when things are going poorly, but ultimately, Alonso is the power behind the lineup, a bona fide thumper that the Mets have precious few of.
How has Alonso maintained that consistent power? And, given his previous performance, what should fans expect from him in 2023? Let’s take a look.
Barrels
According to MLB.com’s definition, a barrel is a “batted-ball event whose comparable hit types (in terms of exit velocity and launch angle) have led to a minimum .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage since Statcast was implemented Major League-wide in 2015.” A barrel must travel at least 98 mph off the bat. The mean batting average and slugging percentage on such balls are generally much higher (.822 and 2.386, respectively, in 2016).
In all four of Alonso’s MLB seasons, he has attained a barrel rate at or above the 80th percentile among all hitters, ranking in the 97th, 84th, 89th, and 86th percentiles from 2019-22. Considering the positive outcomes that result from barreling the ball, it’s not surprising that Alonso has maintained a consistent power output.
Overall, Alonso’s 14.1% career barrel rate is 2.1 times the major league average of 6.7%.
Pitch Improvement
It’s interesting to note that Alonso’s Run Value (RV) on specific pitches has shifted considerably over the years. In his rookie season, he was all about the fastball and sinker, posting an RV of 17 on both of those pitches while facing them a combined 51.4% of the time. Meanwhile, the slider and curveball, which he faced on a combined 30.6% of his total pitches, yielded an RV of -5.
Alonso faced a similar diet of pitches in 2020, but his results were simply much worse. His RV on four-seamers dropped to six, while he went down to -3 on the sinker. The only other positive RV he posted was on the splitter (1), which he faced just six times all season.
In 2021, the rate of sinkers that Alonso faced ticked up to 21.8%, and he improved his RV back up to 9. Meanwhile, though he faced a steady rate of sliders (~17% for the third consecutive season), his output improved significantly, from -1 and 0 RV in his first two seasons to 5 in his third. That upward trend continued in 2022 ,when he actually faced far more sliders than he ever had before (23.0%) but mustered 8 RV.
That ability to adjust to the way pitchers are throwing to him bodes well for Alonso’s future as a hitter. He is not just a dead-red fastball hitter, as he was in his rookie season. In fact, in 2022, Alonso posted the most balanced RV totals of his career:
- 29.6% four-seamers: 6 RV
- 23.0% sliders: 8 RV
- 21.7% sinkers: 9 RV
- 9.3% curveball: 9 RV
- 8.3% changeup: 10 RV
- 7.1% cutter: -8 RV
Clearly, the cutter gave him some trouble at -4.4 RV per 100 pitches. However, the positive value on all other pitches indicates that the Mets’ overall change in hitting approach allowed Alonso to be more balanced as a hitter.
Curveball Relationship
Alonso was very boom-or-bust when it came to hitting curveballs in 2022. He faced them 9.3% of the time (232 total pitches), hitting .327 with a .592 slugging percentage (54 total PA). However, he also whiffed on 39.6% of them, and had the curveball used as a putaway pitch 21.8% of the time.
Considering the high-end potential of his swinging at curveballs, you can’t blame Alonso for doing it so often. However, he may need to focus on identifying the pitch later in an at-bat, particularly with two strikes.
High Chase Rate
The one issue that Alonso could use some work on is his chase rate. He has consistently chased pitches at a higher rate than league average, and he has never ranked higher than the 33rd percentile in the majors in chase rate. 2022 was actually Alonso’s worst season in this area, as he chased pitches out of the strike zone 33.5% of the time, which was in the 19th percentile.
To be fair, Alonso faces fewer “meatballs” than average. His career rate is 6.2%, while the MLB average is 7.2%. This means he needs to earn his hits in some way or other, and that might include chasing pitches out of the zone that he thinks he can hit. He did swing at meatballs 84.7% of the time in 2022, well above the league average of 76.1%, which means he’s identifying good pitches to hit. The question he needs to answer is why he’s swinging at so many that are not.
Improved Strikeout Rate
Alonso has improved on his strikeout rate in each of his four seasons. He went from the 18th percentile in his rookie year to the 34th in 2020, then leapt to the 61st percentile in 2021 and 65th in 2022. His walk rate has always been above average, ranging from the 59th percentile in 2021 to the 70th in 2019 and 2022. Even his overall whiff rate has improved steadily, from the 24th percentile in 2019 to the 53rd in 2022. You can see the effects of working on his pitch recognition. It’s interesting, though, that his chase rate is so high considering his improvements in other areas.
His Worst is Other Hitters’ Best
By most metrics, Alonso’s worst season was in 2020, the Covid year. Part of that may have been simply the small sample size; if you take any 57-game snippet of a player’s season when they played a total of 154 games, by natural statistical variance, there will be some down moments. However, we have also seen other players who had a down Covid year fail to rebound over the two seasons since.
Alonso’s supposed “down” year, though, was hardly a bad season. If you map out his 2020 stats over a full 561 at-bat slate (the lowest total he has posted in his three full seasons at the plate), you still get 43 homers, 94 RBIs, .817 OPS, and 122 OPS+. That means that in terms of analytics, Alonso’s worst MLB season was 22% above the league average.
Undoubtedly, his .231 average and .326 OBP were disappointing that season, as was his 0.2 WAR. However, over the course of a season, you can count on Alonso to figure it out.
Not Clutch? Not So Fast
According to FanGraphs Baseball’s Clutch metric, which compares a player’s performance in high-leverage situations compared to context-neutral ones, Alonso is not the best in clutch situations. He has posted marks of -0.93, -0.49, -0.99, and -0.32 in his four seasons, meaning that he has cost the Mets roughly between 0.3 and 1 point of win probability in clutch situations each season.
However, clutch is such a nebulous term, and the reasoning for variation so undefinable, that it makes more sense to simply look at Alonso’s results. Alonso tied Willie Mays and Joe Torre for the most game-winning RBI in MLB history by posting 27 in 2022. Although not every one of those RBIs occurred in a “late and close” situation, which is the general definition of clutch, hitting game-winning RBI is clutch in and of itself, regardless of situation.
Intentional Walks
Although Alonso was not intentionally walked as much in his first three seasons in the majors, maxing out at six, that changed in 2022. He led the NL with 16 intentional walks last season. That may have been partially a function of poor Mets DH play, which placed some combination of J.D. Davis, Dominic Smith, and Darin Ruf behind Alonso in the lineup for much of the season. It is not coincidental that when Daniel Vogelbach first arrived with the Mets and started to rake, Alonso went on a tear, as well. Protection in the lineup may be considered invalid from an analytics perspective, but a hitter being intentionally walked frequently cannot be denied.
The Mets may want to consider putting a strong RBI threat after Alonso in the lineup, whether Francisco Lindor, Jeff McNeil, or, if he merits it, Brett Baty.
2023 Expectations
Projection systems are notoriously bearish on most players, even given their previous strong play. Here are several projections that have been assigned to Alonso for 2023.
- ZiPS: .261/.349/.515/.864, 38 HR, 112 RBI, 138 OPS+, 4.1 WAR
- Steamer: .261/.347/.520/.867, 39 HR, 110 RBI, 4.2 WR
- Marcels (Baseball Reference): .261/.340/.490/.830, 32 HR, 96 RBI
Considering that Alonso hit .271/.352/.518/.869 with 40 homers and 131 RBIs in 2022, the ZiPS and Steamer projections seem fairly accurate for him even if they’re less so for other Mets hitters. Alonso generally provides negative defensive value, which automatically compresses his WAR potential. However, his home run total from his first four seasons makes it fairly certain that he’ll end up around 40 homers, and his other stats have been relatively stable as well.
Having the Polar Bear in the middle of the lineup is a must for the Mets. Whichever big star they target in free agency next year is next offseason’s problem; locking one of the game’s best sluggers up long-term should be Billy Eppler’s primary goal right now.
