Analysis of the home runs by Pete Alonso in 2021

About the only thing that Brodie Van Wagenen did right and that paid off in spades was bringing up Pete Alonso to The Show for the 2019 season in what might have been considered an “early” move that would start expending Alonso’s controllable time window. Since that decision, Pete went on to win the Rookie of the Year, taking the honors with a MLB-record 53 home runs for a rookie leading to an OPS+ of 147. The pandemic-shortened season saw what looked like a drop in output for Alonso, but he posted a full-season-adjusted tally of 43 (on 16 actual home runs), and a healthy OPS+ of 122. In both 2019 and 2020, I reviewed the pitch locations of Alonso’s HR; below is my analysis of his 37 HR for 2021. Details about the approach in my analyses are in the previous articles.

In 2019, the overwhelming story was simple: pitchers tried to escape Alonso’s power by pitching him outside. It didn’t work as the graph below shows. My suggestion in that analysis was that pitchers were likely to take their chances inside, despite the obvious gamble Alonso could turn on such pitches and hammer them out. The lack of real data for 2020 renders no pattern in the pitches Alonso hit out. What did 2021 bring?

Before getting to the pitch location details, let’s look at some basic things about the homers. Twenty one (57%) of the home runs came against right-handed pitchers, leaving 16 (43%) coming against lefty pitching. Rather than a preference to crush LHP, this more likely represents facing more righties than anything else. But the point is clear, Alonso can take LHP and RHP deep about equally. As far as pitch selection goes, it’s the same story, only with a narrower margin, with 46% coming off from fastballs and 54% came off of off-speed pitches. Alonso does not seem to care about who he faces or what pitch is coming at him. Another interesting and evenly split pairing is starters and relievers, for which there is no preference (54% off of starters).

One criticism levied against Lucas Duda back in the day was that many of his home runs appeared to be solo shots that came at irrelevant parts of the game – either way ahead or way behind where he might not be seeing the most competitive pitches. Only 24% of Alonso’s homers came with the team ahead, with 27% coming in tie games and 49% coming with the team behind and in need of a lift. Alonso had no grand slams and only one 3-run HR; about half of his dingers came with one man on base and half as solo shots. His home runs are split pretty evenly among innings 1-3, 4-6, and 7-9; likewise, his home runs are about evenly split between being ahead, even, or behind in the count. One thing is also clear, Alonso comes to the plate looking to hit home runs: all but one homer came in the first four pitches of his AB. A shade under half came with no outs. In summary, this data point to Alonso being a phenomenally adapted hitter capable of going long in any inning, against starters or relievers, against lefties and righties, and anywhere in the count. Pretty much an opposing team’s nightmare.

Assessing the pitch locations of all 37 home runs in one plot (see below, far-right graph) divided into middle, upper-outer, upper-inner, lower-outer, and lower-inner reveals that pitchers are definitely trying a different approach from 2019, when the story was nothing except outside. Although the plot for 2021 looks sort of evenly scattered, 65% of the homers are on the inside half of the plate, with 38% coming on the extreme inner part of the plate. All this resulted in 31 bombs to left field, and only two to center and four to right. Don’t worry, he hit plenty of homers on the outside of the plate, too.

If you merge the 2019 through 2021 seasons, what is super clear is that Alonso can go long absolutely anywhere in the strike zone. No place is safe. But what else is clear across the seasons is Alonso does not connect outside the zone. While I have not addressed the pitches Alonso has struck out on, we all know he has a penchant to chase low and high outside and pitches at the letters well above the strike zone. Can a hitting coach help break that habit?

As with the data from previous seasons, the data from this season demonstrate that Alonso is much more than a guy who runs mistake pitches out of the park. Copying from my article about 2019: “In virtually all respects of his hitting approach, he could easily be labeled ‘Mr. Consistency,’ not prone to wild streaks like we see with Michael Conforto. Even with the strike outs, Alonso has a solid eye for the whole strike zone, and capacity to put damage on a ball anywhere in the zone. Sure he hits a lot of home runs, but what the data show is a complete offensive threat that Mets fans should enjoy for a good long time.” I see no change.

As the Mets continue to shape the 2022 roster, one thing that continues to surface is what to do about Dominic Smith, the original “heir apparent” to manning first base for the Mets. Across the past three seasons, there have been plenty of articles and commentary about putting Dom at first base and moving to Pete to an AL team or now to DH as it looks inevitable at this point the NL will play a lesser brand of baseball. Alonso has now passed the 1500 PA threshold, which I use as enough to feel good in understanding who a hitter is. One major flag to assess in a hitter’s profile is productivity relative to BABIP, which commonly gets used to identify “lucky” hitters when BABIP score well exceeds the MLB average of about .300. In Alonso’s case, he has generated >120 OPS+ in all three seasons, despite a BABIP average 25 points below MLB average. As Alonso matures, it is reasonable to expect that number to migrate closer to the MLB average, with an increase in OPS and OPS+. Yes, please.

By comparison, Smith has >1200 PAs, so not too far behind Alonso, but his hitting situation is quite different. Although Smith posted an outrageous 168 OPS+ in 2020, that was done with only 200 PA. Furthermore, Smith’s offensive productivity, unlike that of Alonso, is linked exclusively with BABIP, which has ranged across 170 points, with an average of .300. Twice Smith has posted annual BABIP averages at .300, both resulting in OPS+ values < 100. While it is reasonable to expect outlier seasons of amazing hitting from Smith, on average it is likely to be a disappointment, and not worth displacing Alonso and his baked-in annual > 130 OPS+ from first base. Steve Cohen should consider extending Alonso for 10 years at $25M per year while he still can or if he can!