But he turned that around completely this season and was a instead a positive defender at first base, with +2 OAA in 2021, which was in the 72nd percentile among all players. He was a liability at first base in both 20, with -5 outs above average (OAA) in both seasons. While it is very exciting to watch Alonso do what he is best suited to do-mash dingers-an aspect of his 2021 season that cannot go overlooked is how much he improved defensively. He was in the 80th percentile or above in Major League Baseball in exit velocity, hard hit percentage, barrel percentage, and xwOBA, which tells us what we already know to be true: Pete Alonso hits the baseball really damn hard. He hit 37 home runs, drove in 94 runs, and scored 81 runs. When all was said and done, Alonso posted a. And in the second half overall, Alonso put up a 147 wRC+ in 324 plate appearances, lowering his strikeout rate to just 18.5% over that span. In June he posted a 133 wRC+ and in July that number rose to a 136. As the calendar turned to June, Alonso heated up and basically never cooled off. It is clear that Nimmo and Alonso were by far the best offensive performers on the team across the whole season, but Nimmo’s season was affected far more by injury, making Alonso the true stalwart at the plate for the 2021 Mets. Fangraphs gives the slight edge to Brandon Nimmo in fWAR and wRC+, but Alonso is a close second in both. Alonso went on to lead the team in plate appearances in 2021, as well as offensive WAR, OPS+, and bWAR.
Injuries plaguing the Mets continued to be a theme of the 2021 season, but Alonso was activated from the injured list on May 31 after being sidelined for the minimum ten days and he never saw the IL again after that. At the time, the Mets had a whopping 18 players on the injured list. 233 with a 114 wRC+, but it was later revealed that he had been dealing with the hand injury for quite some time, dating back to when he was hit by a pitch in early May. In May until his hand injury, he hit just. He posted a 119 wRC+ in April with a somewhat concerning 31% strikeout rate. At that point, although still above league average, he had been struggling at the plate, like the rest of the roster in the early season. Unlike pretty much all the other position players on the Mets in 2021, Alonso had just one short stint on the injured list in late May for a hand issue. In fact, he was one of the few season-long bright spots on the team-one of the only players on an offensively starved roster who hit consistently while also making huge strides on the defensive side of the ball at first base.Īrguably the most important factor in Alonso’s consistency in 2021 was health. But Pete Alonso was decidedly not one of the reasons the Mets fell short this season. Nonetheless, entering his age 26 season, Alonso was already one of the faces of a 2021 Mets team that had its eyes on playoff contention and expectations were high.Īlas, as we are all too intimately aware, the Mets missed out on the playoffs in 2021 after an epic second-half collapse. In a pandemic-shortened season in 2020, Pete Alonso had a “sophomore slump,” in which he was still 20% better than league average by wRC+.
When your rookie year involves mashing a record-breaking 53 home runs, driving in 120 runs, and putting up a 5 WAR season, almost any follow-up can feel like a letdown.