Keys to Pete Alonso Leading Baseball in Homers Again
The upcoming MLB regular season is forcing us to view baseball differently than we have in the past.
There will be designated hitters everywhere, extra innings will start with a runner on second base, and the postseason field will be decided with 102 fewer games being played by each squad. Since we’re so conditioned to think about baseball as a 162-game schedule, it’s easy to get crossed up with exactly what year-end player statistics might look like.
After all, this 60-game season is basically the same as if baseball started on time and decided to pack it up (and pack it in) around Memorial Day. As usual, FanGraphs’ Steamer projections help provide a general idea of the production we can expect in the oddest year of baseball we’ll ever witness (if it happens). In looking through these projections, I saw a familiar name toward the top of a notable offensive category.
New York Mets first baseman and reigning 2019 MLB home run king, Pete Alonso, is projected to be in the thick of things once again in 2020. FanGraphs is projecting the slugger to hit 16 dingers in 54 games played. This expectation has him tied at the top with Mike Trout and Giancarlo Stanton.
This general pace lines up with what he did throughout his National League Rookie of the Year campaign, too. If we divide his number of games played by number of projected homers, that’d give Alonso one homer every three-and-a-half games or so. The below monthly breakdown of his games played and dingers collected follow a similar pattern:
In each instance, Alonso hit a homer between every 2.45 games and 3.67 games. That level of consistency will be key moving forward into this season. His ISO numbers throughout 2019 settled in above .345 each month except for July and August, which included his lowest two-month homer total of the entire season. But still, Alonso slugged 14 taters and produced a .270 ISO during that time.
So even when his power “slumped”, he still managed to find a way to put up numbers and make an impact.
A season as short as the 2020 campaign magnifies every aspect of an individual and team performance. Every ballplayer wants to get their season off to a good start, but this year, it could be the difference between a great year and a not-so-great year. Alonso coming close to replicating his March/April numbers (which also included a .292/.382/.642 line and a 164 wRC+) would go a long way in defending his single-season homer crown.
Something else worth taking a peek at is parts of the first baseman’s batted-ball profile. Here’s a look at how his fly-ball rate, infield-fly rate, soft-hit rate, and hard-hit rate progressed from the first to the second half last year:
The above numbers are part of the reason why it was so impressive that Alonso still racked up another 23 homers en route to breaking the MLB rookie record. His contact wasn’t nearly as good, evidenced by a spike in infield-fly rate, yet he managed to fight through and make the most of his opportunities to display power.
This might’ve happened because of fatigue setting in, along with some extra pressure — external or internal — to break some single-season homer records. The benefit of 2020 is there won’t be time for fatigue to set in, and if he starts out hot, who knows the kind of numbers he could put up by the time October rolls around.
One final key to keep in mind will be the ballparks the Mets will frequent this year. The majority of New York’s games will be at NL East stadiums, but since they’ll also be facing off against the American League East, there’s an opportunity to play in more hitter-friendly venues. When it comes to home-run factor, here’s where all the parks the Mets will be playing in ranked last year (via ESPN):
The only surprising one here is Yankee Stadium, but we all know how much easier it is to hit homers there than at Citi Field. It’s not like the Bronx hadn’t been featured quite high on this list in recent years prior to 2019 anyways.
Alonso’s ability to hit for power at a prodigious rate will seemingly always have him in the “Who could lead the league in homers?” conversation. This year won’t be any different. If certain things fall into place from the get-go, it’ll be interesting to see how many he can hit given the situation. Could he get super hot and surpass Matt Olson‘s 2017 performance of 24 homers?
Who knows what’ll happen. One of the cool things about a shortened season is the “small sample size” argument no longer applies and some potential chaos could ensue. After months of waiting for some sign of baseball, let’s hope we get that chaos to watch because it’ll be fun.