The Pete Alonso Conundrum

[Frayed Knot]

Just to stipulate, the 'Pete Alonso Conundrum' is neither a lost Robert Ludlum book, nor is it the band that opened for BTO on their
western Canada tour back in the '80s

The question, of course, is when/whether the team should stop paying him year by year and plunge into a long term contract.
The comp that keeps popping into my head, maybe because it serves as the cautionary tale, is Ryan Howard. Both are large,
slugging 1st baseman who reached the majors in their mid-20s
Pete did get a slight jump on Howard by playing a full season at age 24 where RH was just getting his feet wet (39 ML ABs)
but Howard quickly jumped to higher peak seasons.

AGE	Ryan Howard	OPS+	Pete Alsonso	OPS+
24	39 ABs	122	ROY-1, MVP-7	147
25	88 G, ROY-1	133	Covid Season	122
26	MVP-1	167		133
27	MVP-5	145	MVP-8	146
28	MVP-2	125	MVP-17	124
29	MVP-3	141	-----	---
30	MVP-10	127	-----	---
31	MVP-10	126	-----	---
32	71 G	91	-----	---
33	80 G	115	-----	---
34	153 G	92	-----	---
35	129 G	96	-----	---
36	112 G	85	-----	---

The mistake the Phillies made, and I remember thinking this at the time, is that by the time they signed Howard to a multi-year
deal he was already into his early 30s and in what turned out to be the start to a significant decline in both output and availability.
Had he been with the Braves (then or now) they would have wished him well and immediately set off looking for a replacement.
Of course had Pete come up with the Braves they probably would have signed him long-term coming off his rookie season (or
maybe while still in the middle of it) but the Mets haven't shown that they buy into that philosophy and certainly weren't going
to do it in the midst of the Wilpon/Cohen transitional mess.

Alonso becomes a FA the winter he'll turn 30 following the '24 season. Given the length of contracts now in vogue it'll be tough
NOT to sign him into his late '30s and we know that the track record of aging sluggers in the steroid testing era, even among
the elites (Pujols, Cabrera) isn't a pretty one. If you want to pick another slugging comp, Judge, with an MVP plus two other
top fives under his belt, just signed for 9 years starting at age 31. Be interesting to see how that one turns out.

So I guess what I'm asking here is, what's your plan Stan?

[Lefty Specialist]

Sign him for 8 years after the 2023 season. He'll be 36 when it's done. Give him lots of money.

Hope he doesn't get injured like Howard did, which made the end of his career very ugly. You'll also have the DH spot to park him in, something Howard didn't have.

[smg58]

Give him a front-loaded contract with an opt-out that you secretly hope he takes.

[Edgy MD]

Ryan Howard's precipitous decline was accelerated by having to regularly face Pedro Feliciano.

And Jon Niese, for that matter.

[kcmets]

Give him a front-loaded contract with an opt-out that you secretly hope he takes.

Pretty much what is going to happen.

(Reprised from the Arby's Opera thread)

[Fman99]

Sign him for 8 years after the 2023 season. He'll be 36 when it's done. Give him lots of money.

Hope he doesn't get injured like Howard did, which made the end of his career very ugly. You'll also have the DH spot to park him in, something Howard didn't have.

The DH option is not an insignificant one. That will help lots of aging sluggers like future Pete.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The DH option is huge here. David Ortiz raked until the end of his career. Ortiz was pretty much, exclusively a DH. The Fielders, (Cecil and Prince) were toast by their very early 30s. The Fielders fielded quite a bit, especially the fielding Prince, who was a NLer when his league had no DH. Coincidence? Or did the DH greatly impact these different outcomes?

Nobody knows what Alonso's future is. Predicting his future is a guessing game and a luckfest, to a great extent. Like Edgy said in the other thread, there are risks, but also benefits to every baseball contract. Jacob deGrom's new contract also carries risks. And I doubt that deGrom -- a pitcher -- is insurable at this point of his career and with his injury history.

This all started when you know who dismissed out of hand extending Alonso without even considering the tremendous upside in this terrible post:

extend him out for several years

Why? To throw millions of dollars around needlessly and screw themselves if he comes down with a career-ending injury in the next two years?

It's an uninformed post. The risk of injury in the next two years to a non-pitcher in his 20s is insurable. Procuring insurance in a situation like that one is standard operating procedure in MLB. Throw in Cohen's enormous wealth, and the risk practically disappears. Also, why limit the injury risk to the next two years? An injury can happen at any time. The poster then changed his post 180 degrees, but obviously, only after reading and considering my responses, which he pretended to ignore. Yeah right. He's' probably scrutinizing my posts with a microscope and a fine-toothed comb.

[batmagadanleadoff]

By the way, Pete Alonso's most similar BBRef comp through his age 27 season is the aforementioned Cecil Fielder. His closest all-time comp is future teammate Shohei Ohtani.

[Frayed Knot]

The idea that we're going to sign him at some price and length is certainly reasonable but the presumed inevitability of it begs the question of, then why not now
or even why hasn't it already happened. And it of course still could. Just because they hit an arb number doesn't mean they can't come up with something longer
that we'll hear about between now and opening day.

But if nothing happens prior to the end of the '23 season then Pete is looking at complete free agency just a year away which provides all kinds of reasons for a
player to NOT sign a L-T deal while also giving the team a slightly larger disincentive to commit a player will have already hit 30 y/o, especially one who is limited
to the one position on the field (two if you want to treat 1B & DH as interchangeable) where it's easiest to find a bat.

Another potential comp is Freddie Freeman whom the Braves famously allowed to walk away despite coming off four straight top-10 MVP seasons (including one
1st) and a WS title. Now he was turning 32 as he hit FA-gency, not 30, so the comp isn't exact and Atlanta had already squeezed 11 full seasons plus a cup of
coffee year (he debuted in late 2010 a few days prior to turning 21) out of him to that point. His new deal with LA will still have a few years left by the time Pete
can leave on his own so we likely won't know by then if Freddie turns out to be a good long term signing by the Dodgers or more a wishful thinking one.

[Edgy MD]

There are probably dozens of useful comps out there, depending on which criteria you favor. Chris Davis, Paul Goldschmidt, José Abreu ... .

[Frayed Knot]

Certainly. I focused on those two because they represent two opposite ends of action taken by their clubs:
- Philly opting to effectively make the 30+ Howard a Phil-for-life, perhaps against better judgement
- Atlanta choosing the more unsentimental and unpopular route of pivoting to another choice as soon as
they realized that they couldn't keep the guy who had been a favorite in their system for 14 years within
the terms they set.

Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong, just examples of two potential paths involving big Pete

[metirish]

Give him a front-loaded contract with an opt-out that you secretly hope he takes.

Pretty much what is going to happen.

(Reprised from the Arby's Opera thread)

I do like this , absolutely love Pete , another big season and I think the Mets will have to lock him up.

Was it Howard's ankle that bothered him??

[Frayed Knot]

Was it Howard's ankle that bothered him??

The 2011 Philly season ended with 1 - 0 loss to StL in the first round of the playoffs with Howard grounding out to end the game/series. In trying to get out of the box he collapsed in a big heap and needed to have his huge self carried of the field.

I can't remember now the specific injury -- Achilles tear maybe? -- but he took all winter and half the next season to heal (July 6th was his first 2012 game).
Never real mobile to begin with, he became increasingly Mo Vaughn-ish after that.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Bowden: 15 key MLB contract extension candidates to watch before Opening Day

Excerpt:

We are entering the time in the baseball calendar when general managers and their front offices work in earnest to reach contract extensions with their key players. This includes players who will be free agents after this season, next season and those who are a few years away, but also young stars who have as little as one year of major-league service time. Most front offices and players prefer to use Opening Day as a deadline for extension talks so negotiations don’t spill into the season and affect performance.

The stakes are high as teams weigh different metrics and risk versus upside. There are ripple effects from any deal, but also from waiting too long to sign a player long term.

[***]

8. Pete Alonso, 1B, Mets

Age: 28 Free agent: 2025
WAR: 4.4
OPS: .869 HR: 40 RBI: 131

The Polar Bear has mashed 146 home runs over his first four years in the majors, including 40 last season with a major-league-leading 131 RBIs and a .352 on-base percentage. A two-time All-Star and two-time Home Run Derby champ, Alonso has finished top eight in the NL MVP voting twice. He’s a fan favorite and a franchise player, so it just makes sense for him to spend his entire career with the Mets. After 530 games and 2,254 plate appearances, New York knows who he is as a player, so it’s time to reward him.

Also:

1. Shohei Ohtani, RHP/DH, Angels

Age: 28 Free agent: 2024
WAR: 9.6
OPS: .875 HR: 34 RBI: 95
W-L: 15-9 ERA: 2.33 SO: 219

Ohtani shocked the industry when he agreed to a one-year contract for $30 million this offseason despite being arbitration-eligible. Most analysts believe he would have had a strong argument for a one-year deal in the $35 million to $40 million range because of his unique resume as an impact two-way player. Ohtani is eligible for free agency after this season and if the Angels can’t extend him before the trade deadline, their best play will be to trade him at that time. Ohtani likely will break all the financial records (average annual value, overall money), with his next contract probably ending up in the $450 million to $500 million range. But will it be with the Angels or another team?

https://theathletic.com/4107153/2023/01 ... yers-2023/

[roger_that]

There are risks and there are needless risks. As I mentioned over in the other thread, "risks" may not mean the same to Steve Cohen as they do to you and me and about 29 other owners, so we may be overstating the case for delaying signing Alonso to a long-term contract until after the 2023 season, and yes, we may underappreciating the value of having a DH, but the DH doesn't mitigate a total collapse either on Alonso's part. See Pujols, A., for a handy illustration of the danger of having a gazillion-dollar DH tethered to your team for eleventy more years. Of course, Cohen might just feel "So what? We can sign another long-term DH if Alonso goes south on us and overpay Pete to pinch-hit 75 times a season, or swap him out for a $200M total loss that's just the cost of doing business." So maybe the Mets do sign him up sooner than is absolutely necessary.

But "absolutely necessary" comes next November, not this past November. You get a few months of serious negotiations to work things out with his agent exclusively, and you also get all of 2023 up to November for Pete to have a horrible year, or to mangle his body in a career-ending way, or to get arrested for some felony, or anything else that changes the tenor of negotiating in ten months' time. There's very little point in negotiating a baseball season earlier--Pete's going to be mad at you for waiting until November? Maybe, but he doesn't seem the petulant type, and if he is, do you want a petulant superstar? You could sign him now but if he has the greatest year of his career in 2023, you'll be paying more for him? Yeah, but you'll be getting more so that's only fair.

The only factor that makes him unsignable is what he wants in terms of contract length. Both sides probably agree roughly on the probable length of his superstardom, and the going annual rate for a superstar--the question is, how much the team is willing to pay superstar rates beyond that probable length. Say there's rough agreement that he's got five years past 2023 that he's worth top dollar. Is Cohen willing to pay him a sixth year at top dollar in order to get him signed? Sure. A seventh year? Why not? But when you get into a tenth year or a fourteenth year, well, there's got to be a limit to the value of resigning him.

[batmagadanleadoff]

What a long-winded pedantic way of simply saying that the end years of a long-term contract might not benefit the team as much as the earlier years of that contract. And that the Mets shouldn't overpay for Alonso. But if they do overpay, well, Cohen could afford it so who knows what's good for the ultra wealthy money-coming-out-the-wazoo New York Mets?'

The wealthy teams have been overpaying for superstars for decades and decades. It's the price of buying superstars on the free agent market. A team wants a player's productive early 30s years? It's also gonna have to buy some of that star's less attractive late 30s years. That's what it's gonna cost. The Yankees, as just one example, have been doing this for about thirty years and haven't had a single losing season in all that time. In fact, they have baseball's best overall record in that time. It'd be nice if a team could void a superstar's contract unilaterally as soon as the player sucks -- in other words, whenever the team feels like voiding the contract. Is that what you want? Is that what you think should happen? Because if not, then thanks for mastering the obvious principle that baseball contracts carry risks to both sides.

But yeah, we get it: the Mets shouldn't overpay for Alonso -- (whatever overpay actually means to the Mets).

And besides, there are significant benefits to signing a star earlier, or as you put it, before it's necessary. The price of signing elite top baseball talent goes up every single season. The price has never gone down. Not once -- not since the dawn of free agency after the '76 season. The price of top baseball talent rises every single year, by at least 10%, usually more than that and some years, much more. Then apply that price hike over the length of a multi-year contract. So it's cheaper to sign a player earlier rather than later. Waiting another year to extend Alonso could cost the Mets thirty or forty million dollars over the life of the new contract, all other things being equal.

Plus, this all started when you wrote this:

extend him out for several years

Why? To throw millions of dollars around needlessly and screw themselves if he comes down with a career-ending injury in the next two years?

... which is a wholly different concern from what the length of Alonso's hypothetical new contract should be. Not to mention that Alonso could, just the same, sustain a career ending injury even if he's extended after the 2023 season. Or after the 2024 season. And not to mention that if you're concerned about Alonso sustaining that injury during the period before he would've become a free agent -- well that's insurable. A non-pitcher in his mid 20s with no injury history (I can't recall Alonso ever landing on the IL. Or DL) is insurable.

[kcmets]

Nothing really new here, but I was wondering when the Petey talk would
start up again so here's a fresh update (of sorts)...

https://www.mlb.com/news/pete-alonso-po ... -framework

[Benjamin Grimm]

Jim Duquette, on Mets Hot Stove, suggested eight years, $240 million.

[Frayed Knot]

Joel Sherman takes on the Pete Alonso Conundrum. He doesn't call it that (perhaps because my pending copyright of the phrase would
cost him plenty if he tried) but he does take on the whole sentiment vs practical angle for a new POBO and new-ish owner, the projected
dollar/year projections, and comps from Freddie to Pujols/Miggy, and even Aaron Judge.
Good reading.

https://nypost.com/2024/01/20/sports/me ... walk-year/

[metirish]

Very good reading, should be very interesting, if Pete starts hot or cold , and indeed if the team going great or not into the summer

[ashie62]

Keeping Pete might be the only fan friendly move Stearns could make this off season

[MFS62]

He's 29 years old.
They're paying him for his bat speed, not his foot speed.
Length of contract in the 7-8 year range shouldn't be an issue.
I thought of Pujols and Miggy and David Ortiz before reading those articles and anticipate a similar career path for Pete. (position -> DH)

Sign him.

Later

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

They're definitely not going to sign him now that he got through arbitration without a deal and with Boras as the agent.

I think much depends on where we are in late July. We gathered in several hitters at last year's deadline but there's a not a lot of high-ceiling pitching on the way. If it gets to free agency I sure the Mets will be competitive with the $$ then its up to Pete to take it or pull a deGrom.

[Frayed Knot]

He's 29 years old ... Length of contract in the 7-8 year range shouldn't be an issue.
I thought of Pujols and Miggy and David Ortiz before reading those articles and anticipate a similar career path for Pete. (position -> DH)

Now go look at the drop off in the production from Pujols and Cabrera between their age 29 and 37 seasons.

[MFS62]

Pujols went 42-118 at 30 , 37-99 at 31, and even 40- 95 at 35.
David Ortiz went 54-137 at 30 and at the age of 40 had 48 doubles to go along with 38-127 .315. And (eyeballing it) he averaged about 30 -100 in the years in between, not counting the COVID year.
Yes, Cabrera's production dropped off more, although his age 30,31 and 33 years weren't too bad. But you could attribute it to his late in life weight gain (BR lists him at 267 pounds)
But I think Pete's trajectory would follow Albert and David.
Just my opinion, based on Mets fandom.

Later