The Mets’ best hitter so far this year with runners in scoring position is Pete Alonso, who has a .350/.470/.833 line in 83 PA. It’s hard to imagine a better definition of a cleanup hitter than a guy who performs this well with RISP. Alonso was solid last year in these situations, with a 118 sOPS+, meaning that he was 18 percent better than average in this split. This year, Alonso has a 245 sOPS+. That’s, um, really good.
Most of you know that Alonso is leading the league in HR (18) and RBIs (59) and some of you probably know that he’s fifth in the NL in OPS+ (156), too. And all of this has happened in a season that contained a serious car accident in Spring Training, two pitches that hit him in the helmet in the regular season and another that plunked him hard enough on the wrist to miss a game. To say nothing of a dozen or so awkward slides.
But those are not the only bad things Alonso has survived, or missed so far this season. It’s early but Alonso hasn’t had that extended stretch of bad play that haunted him in earlier seasons.
In his rookie year, Alonso entered the All-Star break with a 1.006 OPS. After winning the HR Derby in 2019, he proceeded to struggle at the start of the second half. In his first 18 games of the second half, a span of 82 PA, Alonso put up a .125/.305/.313 line. Not many people could put up a .617 OPS with a .111 BABIP but that’s what Alonso did in his bad stretch that year.
In his sophomore season, the bad stretch came right at the start of the year. In his first 13 games, Alonso had a .579 OPS. The problem was that it was only a 60-game season and Alonso just didn’t have the number of games he would have normally to recover from a slow stat.
Even last year, Alonso went thru a prolonged stretch of sub-par production. And this one lasted more days than the ones he suffered in either his first or second season. It came around his time on the IL, which is why it didn’t have more PA than his poor stretch in 2019. But from 5/5 to 6/5, a span of 77 PA, Alonso had a .619 OPS.
It’s not unusual at all for a player to go three weeks or so and struggle mightily. Without doing the research, my guess is that the overwhelming number of hitters experience this every season. So, while we stump for All-Star berths and MVP votes, remember that we haven’t hit the rough patch this year for Alonso yet.
The first two months of the season, Alonso wasn’t delivering the power we’ve become accustomed to but he was still productive thanks to an elevated – for him – BABIP. In June, his BABIP has tumbled 85 points to .219 but his production has increased because the XBH have returned. Six of his 12 hits this month have gone for extra bases, including 5 HR. Alonso has a .948 OPS in June, compared to an .894 mark the first two months of the season.
People love “RF Pete” but my preference is for HR Alonso. Maybe this is the year that he does both. That would be terrific. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed everything he’s done so far this season because his year-to-date numbers are fantastic. Just prepare yourself for that rough streak that he’s suffered his three previous seasons.