This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo’s Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
NEW YORK -- During a game late last month at Citi Field, the Phillies had a pair of runners in scoring position with two outs when Trea Turner hit a broken-bat grounder to third. Needing to hurry to retire the speedy Turner, Mark Vientos fielded the ball on the run and fired low to first base.
There, Pete Alonso toppled to the ground, reaching out to snare the one-hopper while somehow keeping his right foot on the bag. The throw beat Turner by a quarter of a step.
In the box score, it was a simple 5-3 groundout. In reality, it was yet another example of Alonso’s proficiency at picking balls out of the dirt.
“He’s probably the best in the game at it, to be honest with you,” manager Carlos Mendoza said that night.
On a pure volume basis, there’s no denying that Alonso is tops at this specific skill. Since the start of 2023, Alonso has 62 “scoops,” according to FanGraphs data, which leads the Major Leagues. Atlanta’s Matt Olson is second with 52.
Before going further, it’s worth acknowledging the flaws in this metric. Like many counting stats, “scoops” are context dependent. Part of the reason why Alonso leads the league is because he’s played 340 games at first over that three-year stretch, more than any first baseman other than Olson. More opportunities will invariably result in more scoops, regardless of a player’s efficiency at converting them.
Still, while there’s also no publicly available metric to determine efficiency, an MLB Research analysis determined that entering last weekend’s play, Alonso had one scoop for every 38.3 of his putouts since 2023. That led all first basemen with at least 2,000 innings at first base. Only a handful of his peers were even close.
If you assume that every first baseman sees a roughly equal number of balls in the dirt, then Alonso is clearly converting those into outs at a higher rate than his peers. There’s also all the anecdotal evidence: for years now, teammates and coaches have crowed about Alonso’s ability to pick balls in the dirt.
“He has a knack for it,” Mets infield coach Mike Sarbaugh said.
Alonso’s expertise in this area, according to Sarbaugh, stems from his ability to stay low to the ground and work “down to up” with his mitt. That allows him to pick balls an inch or two off the ground, as well as those that wind up bouncing much higher. For a 6-foot-3, 245-pound first baseman, Alonso is surprisingly flexible.
“He’s very comfortable being low, and that really helps,” Sarbaugh said. “He works hard at it, too. And he takes pride in it, which is really good.”
As Mendoza has frequently noted, the game’s major defensive metrics -- Outs Above Average, Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating and the like -- don’t paint Alonso as an elite defensive first baseman. Frankly, he isn’t one, in large part because of a range factor that’s always graded somewhere between average and poor. While Alonso has long been adept at making diving catches around the bag, he simply doesn’t get to some balls that other first basemen do.
But he does save errors for teammates time and time again through his scoops at first base.
It’s just another element of what has -- so far -- been a transcendent season for Alonso, easily the Mets’ best hitter over the first five-plus weeks of this season. At the plate, Alonso leads the National League in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging. In the field, his ability to pick balls out of the dirt only amplifies his value.
“For me, I want to be the best first baseman I can be,” Alonso said. “That’s part of my game and the position, and I take immense pride in all of it.”