How valuable is Pete Alonso?
The answer was hard to pinpoint during his free agency this past winter. He has always been a dependable power hitter; his 226 homers from his debut year in 2019 through 2024 trailed only Aaron Judge's 232. And don't forget about his two Home Run Derby titles. But there were plenty of warts on Alonso's profile as teams considered him on the open market this offseason.
Although he's proficient at picking balls out of the dirt, he's not a plus defender at first base. He lumbers on the basepaths. Sure, he hits dingers, but Alonso was coming off a year in which his strikeout rate rose to a four-year high (24.7%), he batted a pedestrian .240, and his 34 home runs were his fewest over a full season. Plus, he would enter his 30s in 2025, which must have left some teams wondering how that power would age over a long-term contract. Had Alonso already entered his decline phase?
In the end, the lifelong Met remained with the only big league team he's known, but on just a two-year contract with an opt-out after this season. That gave the Polar Bear an opportunity to prove this year that he is worth a longer, more lucrative commitment.
Six weeks into this season, he certainly looks like he's worth it.
Alonso is batting .328 and leading the National League with a .450 on-base percentage and a .635 slugging percentage. His 23 extra-base hits are tied with Corbin Carroll for the most in the NL. His barrel and hard-hit rates are commonly robust, but they are at the top of the scale this year.
Alonso has already recorded more FanGraphs WAR this season (2.2) than all of last year (2.1), when he played 162 games. His 201 wRC+ trailed only Judge among qualified hitters. And if you combine Alonso's March and April into a single month, his 213 wRC+ during that time stands as the best by any Mets player in a single month since at least 2002 (min. 100 PA in that month).
Here are a few ways Alonso has elevated from slugger to feared all-around hitter.
All statistics updated through Wednesday.
He is being smarter and more aggressive
The most dangerous hitters are those who know what pitches to spit on and what pitches to attack. That's Alonso right now. If you've been paying attention to his remarkable season, you've probably heard about how he is striking out less, walking more and not expanding the strike zone.
Alonso's chase and whiff rates have been falling for the past couple of years, but his respective marks in each statistic -- 24.6% and 21.6% -- are career bests, far ahead of the league average, and big improvements from his early days in the Majors, when he was up around 30%.
The career bests continue when you look at Alonso's strikeout and walk rates, now at 17.2% and 15.4%, respectively. That's nearing Juan Soto territory, and each total represents a significant change for Alonso from 2024 to 2025.
But don't confuse this patience with passivity. Following two seasons in which Alonso's in-zone swing rates were between 61-62%, he is back up to 65.3% this year. That's not a career high -- he was at 70% in 2021 and '22 -- but those extra swings at strikes are paying off for this version of Alonso, who is batting .376 with a .733 slugging in plate appearances ending on in-zone pitches.
Alonso's results on in-zone pitches
2025: .376 average, .733 slugging percentage, .473 wOBA, 61.4% hard-hit rate
2023-24: .283 average, .613 slugging percentage, .374 wOBA, 48.4% hard-hit rate
He is very dangerous with two strikes
Pitchers could possibly breathe a little easier once they got two strikes against Alonso in previous seasons. From 2019-24, he hit .162 and never registered a slugging percentage or an expected slugging percentage of at least .400. He ended a two-strike plate appearance with a strikeout 44.7% of the time.
That strikeout rate has plummeted to 29.9% this year. Alonso's whiff rate with two strikes (15.4%) is 8 percentage points lower than in any prior season. And he has replaced those K's and swings and misses with a ton of loud contact.
Eight of Alonso's nine home runs this season have come with two strikes. That's three shy of his 2024 total and the most in MLB. That's led to a .628 slugging percentage in such counts, tops in the league among players who have had at least 50 plate appearances end with two strikes. And that slug is right in line with an equally impressive .625 xSLG.
Best SLG with two strikes, 2025
min. 50 PA with two strikes
1. Pete Alonso: .628
2. Alex Bregman: .595
3. Shohei Ohtani: .566
4. Kyle Tucker: .508
5. Josh Smith: .500
He can handle any pitch
Did you see that homer in the clip directly above? It came on a slider that Alonso crushed 443 feet into the second deck at Citi Field. That's his longest batted ball of the year so far. It's also a microcosm of how Alonso is handling a pitch that gave him a bunch of problems in 2024.
During that season, 140 batters finished at least 75 plate appearances on a slider. Alonso was one of those players, and his .145 average and .239 slugging against sliders placed him within the bottom 10 of each leaderboard. He struck out 41 times in 117 at-bats against sliders, produced a 29.1% hard-hit rate and had a .239 expected weighted on-base percentage, which takes into account a player's quality of contact, strikeouts and walks.
This season, Alonso is hitting .292 and slugging .583 in 29 plate appearances ending on sliders. His K rate against the pitch has dropped from 33.1% to 20.7% while his hard-hit rate has shot up to 55.6%. That's contributed to Alonso's .463 xwOBA vs. sliders -- third-best among all hitters (min. 20 PA).
That success has put Alonso in a very exclusive group. His xwOBA this year against all breaking pitches -- sliders, curveballs, sweepers, slurves, knuckleballs -- now sits at .409, far ahead of his previous career high of .352 in 2022. His xwOBA is also north of .400 on fastballs (.512) and offspeed pitches (.455), making Alonso one of only two players this season to hold an xwOBA of .400 better in each of the three pitch groups (min. 20 PA in each group). Red Sox outfielder Wilyer Abreu is the other.
Only 21 qualified hitters have a .400 xwOBA for the season. Right now, Alonso is that level of hitter on just about any pitch he sees.
He is unleashing his 'A' swing more often
When you can command the strike zone and get hits on just about any pitch and in just about any count, it's sensible to try to create as much damage as possible with each swing. It appears Alonso is doing that.
Alonso has always created tremendous force at the plate, but his average bat speed has bumped up from 75.2 mph last season to 76.4 mph this year, the 10th-fastest speed in the Majors. Furthermore, Alonso's fast-swing rate -- his percentage of swings at 75 mph or faster -- has increased from 51.8% to 63.9%.
Alonso recently credited the speed change to having "just efficient moves, no wasted movements. ... It's not doing something new. It's just cleaning up and making things more efficient that makes things like that happen." He also talked to The Athletic during Spring Training about the particulars of making his swing more efficient.
Some players near the top of that fast-swing leaderboard -- Oneil Cruz, Jordan Walker, Jo Adell, Jhonkensy Noel -- swing hard with little abandon. Strikeouts are a big part of their game. The same used to be true for Alonso. But he is now combining an improved batting eye, a better two-strike approach, better pitch coverage and more thunderous swings to become an elite hitter.
So, how valuable is Pete Alonso? By batting run value, he has been the most valuable batter in the National League.
If he keeps this up, he may be the Most Valuable Player in the National League.
MLB.com's Anthony DiComo contributed to the reporting in this article.