Paul Articulates – For Pete’s Sake

The New York Mets have had a very rough season – we all know it.  You have read plenty of stories about their epic failures from pitching collapses to hitting woes to the disappointment of having the highest salaried team in history win less than half of their games.  It is another “bad break” in the history of a team that specializes in bad breaks.

Sometimes the reaction to such a season is for people to call for the heads of the GM and manager, to demand a purge of all the underperforming players, or a fire sale to begin rebuilding. I understand the emotional reaction to such disappointment.  I accept it as part of human nature.

But here is one thing I don’t accept – people suggesting that we trade Pete Alonso to get a bucket of prospects.  Pete is currently in a terrible slump that has brought his batting average down to .205 and the harder he tries the worse it gets.  Pete has rewarded fans in the past with his heroics so it is even more frustrating to watch him pop out or strike out with runners in scoring position.  But this is a slump, not a manifestation of his true baseball abilities.  

Pete is a legitimate power hitting baseball star that you want on this baseball team for many, many years.  The fans want to see him hit; the owner wants to see his box office draw; the teammates want him in the clubhouse.  Do not EVEN think of moving him!

We should be talking contract extension, not trade value.  That was the talk at the end of last season – did you forget that quickly?  Pete has 4.0 years of MLB experience in a game where you can become a free agent with more than 6 years of MLB experience.  

He has avoided arbitration in the last two seasons by agreeing to one year contracts of increasing value as his value increased.  His current year salary is $14.5M.  That puts him behind Freddie Freeman, Paul Goldschmidt, and Joey Votto for average salary per contract year.

Before we get into how much he is worth and what Steve Cohen and Billy Eppler should be offering, let’s talk about Pete’s value in the market.  The table below shows some of the noteworthy first basemen in baseball today.  I have created an “equivalent seasons” metric by dividing the number of career games played by 162 to normalize for the shortened 2020 season and injuries so we could look at a pure metric for the performance delivered.  

In that table, you will see that Alonso leads all of these guys in average HR and RBI per equivalent season.  That’s right – we have a 28 year old ballplayer that produces more power and runs per game than anyone else and he loves playing in New York.  We should go to great lengths to keep him.

So what is Pete worth in a contract extension?   Freddie Freeman’s $162M six year contract with the Dodgers was the most lucrative deal with a first baseman to date.  Freeman is an exceptional player that delivers gold glove quality defense, a lifetime .300 average, and some serious power with his .899 career OPS.  Goldschmidt is earning $22M this year and next and still producing in his mid-30’s.  Matt Olson seems like a bargain at an average of $21M/year with the power numbers he is producing this year.

Pete has delivered more home runs than anyone else in the last five years.  He has continuously improved his fielding and his batting for average with the exception of the current slump.  If you remember earlier in this year he was touted for being able to go with pitches away instead of trying to pull them.  His injury history has proven his durability – his only notable IL time has been due to HBPs.  He is a great clubhouse guy – always positive, supportive of his teammates, and very real in live interviews. 

I think that any long term extension will have to be in the $25M/season ballpark and given his age and durability will probably have to be an 8-10 year deal.  That is a $200M to $250M commitment, but given the contracts that Lindor, Scherzer, and Nimmo have been given it seems like the price of doing business when you are building a winning ball club.  Another one-year extension would have to be over $20M anyway, so why not offer the full monty this year?  So the Mets’ front office should dump some salary at the trade deadline and spend it a long term deal for Pete – they will not regret it.