Report: Teams are ‘hesitant’ to give Pete Alonso long-term deal

Report: Teams are ‘hesitant’ to give Pete Alonso long-term deal

As we enter the penultimate weekend in December, one of MLB’s best free-agent sluggers, first baseman Pete Alonso, remains unsigned.

This isn’t surprising given he’s a Scott Boras client. Boras will try to extract every last dollar for his clients–no matter how long that takes–even though that bit him in the butt last season with Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell.

But Alonso, 30, is arguably the best hitter left on the board after first baseman Christian Walker signed with Houston on Friday. Given his raw power and age, Alonso is expected to seek a much longer deal than Walker, who’s 34. Though according to ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan, the reason why he’s still available is teams’ reluctance to give him long-term money.

“First baseman Pete Alonso’s and right-hander Jack Flaherty‘s fortunes are unclear and could depend on where [Corbin Burnes] and [Alex Bregman] land,” Passan wrote Thursday. “On one hand, Alonso’s consistent production — he plays all the time, has averaged 42 home runs and 110 RBIs in his five full big league seasons, and would fit in the heart of the batting order for every team in baseball — is unimpeachable.

“On the other, his profile frightens teams: a 30-year-old, right-handed-hitting and -throwing first baseman. Teams are hesitant to give him a long-term deal. At the same time, they see great value in adding him for the next few years. The Mets could still bring him back. The Yankees could enter the fray more aggressively. Sometimes, markets just take time to build, but the risk in waiting is that they never do.”

According to MLB Trade Rumors, Alonso was projected to earn five years, $125 million. He previously rejected a seven-year, $158 million extension from New York in June of 2023; it’s not often Boras clients sign extensions near the end of their first deals, but could he (Boras) be seeking upward of $200 million? I wouldn’t rule it out.

In each of his first five seasons (where 162 games were played), Alonso has clobbered at least 34 homers in all of them–including at least 40 homers thrice. Last year, he hit 34 homers with 88 RBIs and a 123 OPS+, tied for the lowest of his career (min. 150 games).

He made up for it in October, however. Alonso helped lead the Mets to their first NLCS appearance since 2015, slashing .273/.431/.568 (.999 OPS) with four homers and 10 RBIs in 13 postseason games.

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Alonso is quite poor defensively, but we’re also at the point in the offseason where every available free agent is either a poor hitter or a poor defender. Alonso graded in the 84th percentile or better in barrel rate in every year of his career and in the top-25 percent in hard-hit rate in four of them, according to Baseball Savant.

Conventional wisdom suggests that he won’t be playing first base for most of his new contract, depending on where he lands. But is it worth it to be paying nearly $25-30 million for a full-time DH for the next five or so years? We’ll see what the market says.

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