The Polar Bear has cut down on chasing and is seeing more pitches than ever before.
It is too early in the season to put much stock into numbers of any kind. A good game or a bad game can totally skew perspective when we’re only a week or so into the season. We all know that getting too excited by a small sample size is foolish.
That said, Pete Alonso is looking fantastic at the plate so far this season.
This isn’t just because he’s now hit two huge, multi-run home runs in the past three games, although those obviously add to the excitement about Pete right now. No, the bigger piece is that Alonso is looking far more confident and patient at the plate.
Unlike the pressing Alonso who seems to flail at every pitch down and away and then walk to the dugout shaking his head, this Alonso is fighting off close pitches and laying off bad ones, in a way that he never quite has before. Again, small sample size caveats apply for all of these, but six games into the season and Alonso has walked five times and struck out just twice. Alonso has as many doubles and home runs as strikeouts.
To compare apples to apples, let’s look at Alonso’s doubles, home runs, walks, and strikeouts over the first six games of every one of his major league seasons.
Let’s continue by looking a really simple metric: pitches per plate appearance.
2019 – 3.98
2020 – 3.88
2021 – 3.60
2022 – 3.65
2023 – 3.90
2024 – 4
2025 – 5.11
But more than seeing a lot of pitches, Pete is choosing to swing at better pitches. While he’s still swinging at approximately the same amount of pitches in the zone and making similar contact, it is what he is doing outside the zone that is so impressive. Despite an already declining chase rate over the past two seasons, he really isn’t chasing much so far in 2025, and when he is chasing, he’s still making contact.
Now all of this could go away tomorrow, obviously, but there are signs that this could be for real. Alonso worked a lot this offseason at a facility called Diesel Optimization, specifically working on his hips and – you guessed it – cutting down on chasing.
Alonso’s contributions seem especially important thus far because the rest of the team just isn’t hitting right now. But when they start hitting – and they will – Alonso’s improvements will be just as important, both for the Mets and for his pending free agency.