Pete Alonso Has Entered 2025 as the Best Version of Himself

When Pete Alonso came up in 2019, he was tabbed as an all-fields hitter with tremendous power potential. This became apparent when the ESPN crew marveled at his ability to use all fields during his home run derby victory over Vladimir Guerrero Jr. that very season.

With Guerrero Jr. recently signing a 14-year, $500 contract extension with the Blue Jays, Alonso now figures to be the top first base option in this year’s free agency class if he chooses to opt out of the two-year, $54 million deal that he signed with the Mets this past offseason.

Alonso’s first stab at the free-agent market was not a pretty one. He entered on the heels of declining a six-figure contract extension from New York in 2023 and bet on himself.

With high expectations, he struggled in 2024 and had to settle on a much less lucrative deal to return to Queens, a reunion that seemed out of the cards at various points in the offseason.

Since signing the contract, the Polar Bear has done nothing but mash. As Alonso has the option to hit free agency after the season, let’s take a look into a player who has somehow become underrated, although that might not last for much longer.

All stats and rankings taken prior to play on Thursday, April 17.

Alonso’s Playing for a Contract Again

The former-second round pick broke onto the scene in 2019, hitting a rookie-record 53 home runs in a season filled with accolades. He picked up a National League Rookie of the Year Award, was named an All-Star and finished seventh in NL MVP voting.

By the end of the season, he had a .941 OPS.

After hitting 16 home runs in the limited sample that was the 2020 season, Alonso hit 37 in his second full season in 2021, posting a solid .863 OPS. The following year, Alonso’s OPS hovered right around the same mark, but he hit 40 home runs, drove in a career-high 131 runs, tying Aaron Judge for the top mark in MLB that season. His .271 average was a career-high as well.

All of this set Alonso up to received a contract extension just north of $150 million around the trade deadline in 2024, but Alonso would decline in hopes of reaching free agency to set a new bar for free agent first basemen with his deal.

Unfortunately for Alonso, his bet on himself did not pay off, as he put together a pair of underwhelming season in his platform years before hitting the market.

In 2023, he hit just .217 before having a career-low .788 OPS in 2024. This made for an intriguing offseason, where Alonso’s market seemed nonexistent.

Whether no team was interested in because they assumed his was going back to the Mets, or if they just found his asking price too high, Alonso stayed on the market until the calendar turned to February.

Eventually, the Mets and Alonso’s camp got in a room together and were able to hammer out a short-term deal that worked for both sides.

Alonso would receive $30 million for the 2025 season, with $10 million of that coming in a signing bonus. This made him the highest-paid first baseman in baseball for this season, but only guaranteed him $54 million overall, as he has a $24 million player option for 2026.

The option provides a security blanket for Alonso, but the plan is clearly to reestablish his market and take his chances again next winter. Now with Guerrero’s new deal, the path has been cleared for Alonso to be the top free agent first baseman for the second season in a row.

To put it bluntly, Alonso is a flawed player. He plays a middle-of-the-pack first base and, aside from power totals, has been an inconsistent offensive player. 2019 and 2022 saw great seasons from Alonso as he drove in over 120 runs in both seasons and placed top-10 in MVP voting both times. However, the lack of consistency in 2023 and 2024 cooled his market.

A strong postseason in ’24 reminded the baseball world of Alonso’s value, something seemingly only the Mets were interested in. But if Alonso wants to get a nine-figure deal, he is going to need to sustain what we saw in October over a full 162. The good news for Alonso, and the Mets, is that he has more than lived up to that potential through the first few weeks of the season.

Leading the League After Hot Start

In 2025, Alonso has gotten off to maybe the best start of his career. After all, his .365 batting average so far leads the Mets and is Alonso’s highest-ever batting average during the months of March and April. Entering play on April 17, Alonso’s 230 wRC+ to lead the Senior Circuit and ranks third in all of baseball.

Per usual, the power has come along to the tune of five home runs, eight doubles, and a .730 slugging percentage that trails only Aaron Judge. His 1.205 OPS leads the NL as well.

Alonso’s 162-game average — game total that he hit last year — is over 40 long balls and over 60 doubles. While the latter part will more than likely not happen, a 40+ homer season has become the norm for the 30-year old first baseman.

Albeit a small sample size, 2025 has seen Alonso become a more refined and polished hitter, something that we saw briefly in 2019.

Potentially due to a more potent supporting cast, Alonso has driven in 21 runs — the second most in the NL — and he has reached base at a .474 clip.

While his game has always been plagued with strikeout issues, Alonso has walked more than he has struck out in 2024. He has cut his K-rate in half, from 24.7% last year, to 12.8% in 2025, with a walk rate of 15.4%, which is over 5% better than his career-mark of 10%.

How has he done it?

To start, Alonso is squaring up the baseball. While it seems like a simple solution, his squared-up rate has gone from the 26th percentile in 2024 to the 59th percentile so far this year, according to Baseball Savant.

Alonso has not been a customer of the new torpedo bats but has still created barrels at the highest rate of his career. While his previous career-high in barrel percentage was 15.8%, Alonso has improved upon 2024’s 13.2% with a staggering 24.1% barrel rate in 2025.

This number will come down with time, but simply put, he is squaring up the ball at a rate that we have not seen before. Even though his swing has been better at catching the barrel, a more obvious change is his approach switch.

While new teammate Juan Soto has always been a walk-machine, Alonso makes his money on slugging, not trotting to first base. Now, being shoehorned between Soto and fellow on-base threat Brandon Nimmo, Alonso has taken after his teammates.

Since 2022, his chase rate has slashed from 33.5% to a career-low 23.2% mark in 2025. Alonso has been much more patient and willing to work deep into counts, as his first pitch swing percentage went down by nearly five percent between 2024 and 2025.

Alonso has prioritized quality of contact in 2025, as he is swinging less while consistently hitting the ball harder than he ever has before.

His average exit velocity is up to 96.3 mph, 6.5 mph up from last year. As a matter of fact, while below his true batting average, his .346 xBA demonstrates the incredible quality of contact that Alonso has displayed this season. That number is in the 98th percentile league-wide.

Is it sustainable?

The short answer is yes. While we can preface by saying that Alonso will not be a .345 hitter through the rest of the season, it is safe to expect him to lean closer to his 2019 and 2022 ways rather than the consistent decline that was seen over the past two seasons.

Could the pressure of an impending contract negotiation have played a role in his struggles? Possibly; however, it’s not like he has immense security with his new deal.

More than likely, Alonso is performing due to the support from other parts of the lineup.

New York’s lineup is legit. In 2023, Alonso had little support outside of Francisco Lindor in a lineup that won 75 games. Heading into 2024, the big story of the Mets’ offense was whether or not the Mets would add protection behind their slugger.

Their answer was J.D. Martinez, who gave the team a spark once he was ready for action in May, but tapered off towards the end of the season. Martinez’s slump coincided with a downturn from Alonso, who hit .222 in September — his lowest batting average of any month during the ’24 campaign.

Getting some reinforcement in the batting order was not cheap for the Mets. Along with bringing back Alonso, they had to open the wallet in a big way to acquire Soto, pairing the two with Lindor, Nimmo and Mark Vientos on the top half of the lineup card.

With constant traffic on the bases, Alonso’s job is easier. He does not need to carry an entire team. His role now is simply hitting the ball hard somewhere on the field and bringing in his teammates, something that he has done well throughout his career.

The Florida-native has not relied on batted ball luck whatsoever, but instead has laid off bad pitches and squared up pitches in his wheelhouse to create offense.

Only time will tell as to how long Alonso can continue the pace that he has created over the first three weeks of play. The one thing that is for certain is that the version that we have seen over the past 18 games is the best version of Pete Alonso that the baseball world has seen.