For the fourth year running, I am taking a deeper dive into the home runs of Pete Alonso for the season. You can see the progression of these stories in 2019, 2020, and 2021, which shows what a total beast Alonso has become. In reviewing my article for the 2021 season, my closing thoughts looked at a comparison between Alonso and Dominic Smith and concluded: “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.” I think by now we can see there is little doubt Alonso is substantially a better player. With no threat to be displaced and nothing anywhere near the productivity on the horizon, it remains smart to lock down Alonso with a 10-year deal now, or, as I thought 12 months ago, back then.
Onward to where Alonso is now and what the 2022 season brought. From the cumulative or average numbers perspective we all need to recognize what a core asset to the Mets Alonso is. With four years in the bigs (really three given the pandemic shortened season), he has shown he can perform at an elite level consistently. At 146 homers, he sits in seventh place in Mets history, three behind Carlos Beltran and eight behind Dave Kingman. In 2023, Alonso will be in fifth place all time. By the end of 2024 after which he becomes a free agent, he will pass Howard Johnson and be nipping at the heels of Mets and MLB Hall of Famer Mike Piazza. It is reasonable to envision that three years from now, or after his first year of free agency, he will have > 260 home runs and be the all-time leader at age 31, not to mention being on track for a 400 home run career. He tops the team leader board in fewest ABs per homer. His career OPS+ is 146 a shade below John Olerud and Darrell Strawberry. Pete Alonso is a genuine elite power bat that can hit clean-up for many years to come.
These annual home run analyses reveal that Alonso has so many positive attributes about his capacity to crush baseballs that we can overlook the agonizing strike outs from chasing out of the zone. In 2022, Alonso had 40 home runs, scattered somewhat unevenly through the season as the monthly images show in the figure. His biggest months were in May, June, and September. In this year’s analysis, I have separated the pitch locations for homers hit off fastballs (red dots) and breaking balls (blue dots). Regardless of locations quadrant, Alonso seems to connect with fastballs. Most of breaking balls he hit out are in the lower half of the strike zone, most likely because those pitches start letters or belt high and drop. What is clear is that Alonso can hot both. What I find interesting is that his home runs really come from the strike zone, suggesting if he can learn to not chase junk pitches things can only improve.
Let’s dig into some more details from 2022. While CitiField had never been a hitters park, Alonso 43% of his dingers at home. He hit about half of his homers against divisions rivals, although I thought there might be more given the total games played against division rivals. Only hitting 2 (that’s right only 2) against the Braves took a toll on that. It always interesting to see how pitching handedness plays into these kinds of numbers. In the 2021 season, a bit more than half of his homers came against right-handed pitchers, but in 2022, a full 80% came off of righties. Sure, there’s more righties on the mound, but not that much more. It seems unlikely Alonso prefers to see right-handed pitching, but it is clear gaming an AB against him won’t work.
Most of his home runs (63%) came off of fastballs this year compared to only 46% last year. Was this an approach change? I suppose that’s not much of a surprise with the “hunt fastballs” approach a lot of hitters take. The good news is that nearly 40% come from breaking pitches. His ability to hit breaking pitches for power means there’s no easy approach, and it doesn’t matter if it’s against starters or relievers. Like in 2021, last year his home runs were split pretty evenly between innings 1-3 (13), 4-6 (14), 7-10 (12).
Looking over the monthly quadrant maps, and the total home-run quadrant map reveals that Alonso has the strength and bat-to-ball skills to go long from anywhere in the strike zone. Not many pitchers want to go middle-middle against any hitter let alone a power a guy like Alonso, so this year only 2 long balls were center-cut, both breaking balls that either started high and dropped in or just hangers.
Last season, Alonso led the major leagues with 131 RBI. We all know about the limits of putting too much emphasis on this metric, but runs matter, and surely we all want our mashers to bring runs in. Of this total, 77 RBI came from home runs, with 63% coming with runners on base. This does leave 54 RBIs (41%) that came from other hits, which would seem to point to Alonso knowing that he doesn’t need to go long to be effective.
In addition to the annual tracking, I delight in compiling the locations of every home run Alonso hits through time. The figure shows the locations of every home run Alonso has hit since becoming a big leaguer with two grids: the basic quadrant + middle-middle map and then the 3×3 map (which is more precise than I can actually locate pitches). As this fills up, the picture seems to get clearer and clearer. What my eyes see is a slugger that can hit the ball out of the park regardless of where the ball is pitched. Those pitches that come middle-middle are destined for the seats. There really isn’t a deep pattern in the data except that there is a distinct gap in the extreme upper-inner area where most pitchers would go facing a right-handed batter. I can see what pitchers go away on the slider though and make him chase out of the zone as few long balls come far outside. By contrast, he has clubbed quite a few out of the zone inside and low.
Alonso remains the most potent offensive threat the Mets have. By every metric expected of a power hitter, he more than fills the bill. He is on track to smash all kinds of Mets records, but more importantly act as a core player this team needs for the long term. Sure, he runs goofy, and I expect him to face plant trying to leg out a double or score from second on a hit, but Alonso is a monster at the plate, a terrific player, can scoop crappy throws from the left side all day long, and really feels like a home grown Met Steve Cohen should lock down for something like 10/350M$.
Thanks for doing this, Chris.
As someone who started really following the team when John Milner was the big “slugger,” it’s nice to have a real power hitter like Alonso on the club. He provides an entertaining and necessary dimension.
However, to me he’s an improvement over, but basically in the same boat, as Conforto. He’s a really good guy to have but I don’t view him as an absolute necessity to lock up long term, especially not 10 years.
Just my opinion.
Chris,
Great write up, I enjoy these deep dives.
I’m enjoy watching Pete, he is the closest thing to a must see at bat that the Mets have had in a long time. That said, your price tag seems a tad steep. He’d need to put up a Judge-type season to get into that price level.
Chris, this is a great follow-up to your other great work showing us how Alonso is growing as a hitter. He does in fact add something to his arsenal every year whether it’s going the other way for the easy base hit if there is a runner in scoring position or if he has two strikes, to wanting to hit for a higher average after his self-proclaimed disappointing .231 in 2020.
However, I do agree with Brian. I think Chris Davis will remain the poster boy for big contracts to sluggers gone bad. Would I give him a five year pact? Sure, and maybe at a little higher AAV, but no way 10 years. While I think Alonso has worked to be a decent first baseman, the numbers don’t show it and he doesn’t seem to show it. He works hard on the scoops like Willie Stargell and the cool first basemen used to do, but he needs to stay slim in order to maintain his quickness as long as possible, otherwise he’s a DH. I’d give him 5/$125 or that neighborhood and he should sign it quickly.