Pete's Patience Paying Dividends
Fun with stats!!
Image credit: Roberto Carlo
Pete Alonso is playing the hands he’s being dealt this season and doing so beautifully — dead baseballs and all.
Over the first five weeks and three days of the 2022 season, home runs are down substantially compared to the same stretch last season (989 to 1,161 from April 1 to May 9, 2021).
What’s exactly up with the balls? We’ll leave that level of hypothesizing to the experts.
And it’s not just the baseballs that have been working against Pete. Opposing pitchers simply aren’t giving him much to work with. At all.
Alonso’s seen the seventh-least first-pitch strikes in the majors this season (46.9%, per Statcast; Juan Soto, 41.9%) and the 10th-most pitches outside the zone (57.7%). Clearly, pitchers have a book on the polar bear.
Alonso’s career line on the first pitch is .382/.405/.826. Oh, he’ll get ya if you let him. And, indiscriminately — no matter if you’re Mike Trout or Jarred Kelenic — sliders breaking off of the plate make for perfect putaway pitches — as evidenced by Pete’s game-ending strikeout on Sunday. More on the latter shortly.
Yet, despite those obstacles — plus the perpetual cat-and-mouse dynamic of this game — Alonso’s production has remained largely unaffected. Love to see that.
Over his first 155 plate appearances of the season, the 27-year-old is hitting .270/.342/.489 with eight home runs, 29 RBIs, and 139 wRC+, which is just a shade off his 144 wRC+-pace from 2019.
Alonso’s expected batting average (.282) and weighted on-base average (.361) are on par with his 2021 marks (.271 and .363, respectively), and his expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA, for those keeping track at home) is identical at .377.
So how is he pulling it off? A remarkably measured approach, for one. Alonso’s simply not trying to do too much. To borrow an ageless baseball cliché, he’s letting the game come to him.
You’ve certainly noticed Pete’s penchant for going the other way with two strikes over the last season or two. That’s exactly what it takes. And, the wonderful part is, he’s not sacrificing any other facets of his game to make this happen.
The power will always be there when a pitcher makes a mistake, that much we know. But we’ve also seen Alonso adopt a more measured and level-headed response to falling behind in the count. And there’s the alchemy.
Alonso curbing his first-pitch swing rate from 36.7 percent in 2021 to 26.8 percent this season likely has a ton to do with keeping ahead of the inevitable adjustments coming from the other side. And, as we’ve seen, patience pays off in this game.
There’s absolutely no sense in wasting a strike when you’re only seeing in-zone first-pitches in less than half of your trips into the box. And, of course, falling behind in the count generally doesn’t bode well for the rest of the at-bat.
You can see below (per Statcast) how pitchers are attacking Alonso based on the count below.
Notice the number of sliders he’s been getting at 0-0? That’s precisely where Pete keeping it in its holster is paying off.
Check out where things go at 1-0. The pitcher needs a strike, he usually throws a fastball, and the slider takes a back seat. At 0-1, and even more so at 0-2, the slider returns in force. Now take note of the sharp increase in fastballs as the count gets deeper.
The slider, of course, is every hitter’s kryptonite and has — rightly so — taken center-stage in today’s game. Avoid that thing at all costs. Especially if you’re Pete Alonso and your calling card is depositing heaters into outfield seats.
Basically, if you can force a pitcher to go to the fastball more often than they’d prefer (or more than the scouting report tells them to), you do it. Very interested to see how Alonso keeps the upper hand as the year draws on. Chess, not checkers.
With storms heading for the NYC area, the Cards and Metsies have been postponed tonight. A straight two on Tuesday starts at 3:10 PM EST.
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