No. 19 prospect Alfonzo bringing power jolt into Pirates' system

ALTOONA, Pa. -- Omar Alfonzo can’t exactly remember who showed him the data last year, but the results were eye-opening.

He may have been in Single-A for most of the season, but he was hitting the ball harder than almost anyone in the Pirates organization.

Granted, the impressive factoid might need a bit of an asterisk. Batted ball data is publicly available for Triple-A Indianapolis and Single-A Bradenton, but not for Double-A Altoona or High-A Greensboro. There’s a good chunk of hitters who were omitted, but the sample size was still rather large.

And among the players tracked, no Pirates Minor Leaguer could top Alfonzo’s recorded 92.8 mph average exit velocity. The only player at the Major League level who topped that was Oneil Cruz (95.5 mph).

After learning that, the takeaway was simple: get that hard contact in the air, preferably on the pull side.

• Final -- White Sox 10, Pirates 1

“It’s more contact point,” Alfonzo explained. “I’m gonna hit the ball a little more in front, it’s naturally gonna go up.”

So far, he is elevating the ball more, and it’s leaving the yard more. Alfonzo had a 26.1% fly ball rate with Bradenton last season. This year, it’s been 35.2%. He’s also hit 13 home runs this year between Greensboro and the Curve, the same amount he hit in 2024. Mix in a nearly 15% walk rate, and Alfonzo -- the organization’s No. 19 prospect according to MLB Pipeline -- is slashing .248/.368/.431 across High-A and Double-A this season.

That work this offseason is paying off, and he had a good teacher to help him: his father, Eliezer Alfonzo. The elder Alfonzo played parts of 22 seasons as a professional, six of which were in the Majors.

Omar learned plenty from his dad through immersion. He saw his dad catch, and he and his brother -- Eliezer Alfonzo Jr., a Minor League catcher in the Tigers’ system -- both wanted to put on the tools of ignorance too.

“My routine when I was a kid was go to school, [and] in the afternoon, go to the stadium every day and watch the game at night,” Alfonzo said. “I knew I was gonna play baseball.”

That upbringing puts him in a unique intersection of old school and new school. He has the exit velocities to make him an analytical darling, but also has the knowledge of the game within the game and how things operate that comes from experience.

“All my life, I’ve been in a clubhouse,” Alfonzo said. “Big league clubhouse, winter ball clubhouse. I was just a young kid. Being around all those people, it helped me a lot in my career. I’m not going to say I know everything, but I know a lot about what happens.”

The Alfonzo boys became the clubhouse kids and picked up nuggets about the game, especially catching. They’re the center of the diamond, and a pitcher needs to know his backstop has their back and is thinking about this at-bat, not what happened with his at-bat earlier in the game.

There are intricacies with the game, and it couldn’t be lost that as Alfonzo was talking about playing catcher, he was wearing a first baseman’s mitt.

That has also been a new development over the past few years. Alfonzo is a catcher at heart, but has gotten semi-regular reps at first base to keep his bat in the lineup. It also opens up options for how he could potentially fit into the Pirates lineup down the road.

“I like it because it makes me stay in the game,” Alfonzo said. “I like to play every day.”

The best way to ensure that he stays in the Curve lineup is to keep producing those hard-hit fly balls and building on what was working this offseason.

“You’re seeing the results,” Alfonzo said. “That’s my goal: get more extra bases.”