Reviewing Baseball America’s 2018 Top 30 Mets Prospects: #4 Peter Alonso

So this should be fun!

Peter Alonso and Jeff McNeil were the two players in the Mets farm system that saw their stocks sky rocket last year as the season went on. Eventually Jeff made his way to Queens after the Cabrera trade, but the Mets refused to call up Alonso who was crushing the ball in Vegas. The Mets gave a lot of excuses around defense or not wanting to play anyone out of position (which of course was laughable, the Mets were playing people all over out of position). Obviously the Mets were keeping Alonso down to extend their team control of him.

It already looks like he is being groomed as the Opening Day first basement. Let’s first remind ourselves what the collective hive thought of Alonso before the season, and then get into his mind changing, ridiculous numbers.

Baseball America wrote about his exit velocity and that he had the most power in the Mets system (proved many times over to be true last year). They wrote about how much work he needed at first base to be in the field, this was also a consensus last year except he hit so well no one really cared. Baseball America predicted that he could land himself in the big leagues int eh second half of 2018, but forgot this was the Mets and they don’t always do what they should.

In his first full season he slashed .321/.382/.587 in Brooklyn, hitting 5 homers in 109 AB’s. Then in 2017 he hit a .289/.359/.524 between St Lucie and Binghamton hitting 18 homers in 353 AB’s.

But then 2018 happened. Between Binghamton and Las Vegas he hit .285/.395/.579 with 36 homers in 478 AB’s. He then added 6 homers in 98 AB’s hitting .255/.339/.510 in the Arizona Fall League.

Peter Alonso accomplished what I assume to be a rare feat. He played much better last year than even Baseball America thought but failed to reach their upper vision of the level he’d play at (missing the majors), which speaks more about the Mets Front Office than anything else. It was already reported this week that Frazier has requested a locker next to Alonso so the Mets are getting ready to finally bring him into the major league fold.

Here’s hoping he brings the thunder to Citi Field next year!