Orioles Best Prepare As If This Is The Best Season They'll Get Out Of Pete Alonso

Pete Alonso took to being the face of the 2026 Baltimore Orioles quite quickly and has been about what could be expected at the plate and better than expected in the field and clearly a dominant outward voice in a long-wobbly clubhouse.

He’s been very good, but nowhere close to an MVP candidate as he was at his very best with the Mets. And given the prevailing player development failures of Mike Elias yet again atop the Orioles baseball operations (Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Colton Cowser, Heston Kjerstad, and until recently - Coby Mayo and Jackson Holliday, too) it hasn’t been nearly enough to make this an even average MLB lineup since June 1, let alone one that was supposed to achieve “liftoff.”

And as he progresses deeper into his 30s in this five-year deal, he is going to offer less of that unexpected defensive value at first base and will have to serve even more as the designated hitter, where they need the bat to be gravitations and not just quite good. Whether they ever get that or not remains to be seen, Elias’s MLB-level transactions have largely failed, and Alonso is blocking Samuel Basallo and Mayo from getting more looks at first base, another reason they need him to be an elite run producer in a lineup that has far too few proven hitters in the clutch.

With Henderson having just two years of team control beyond this season, and almost certain to join Rutschman as a trade export in 2027, Alonso, 31, will be even more the face of this thing as Basallo and hopefully Holliday make a consistent impact and hopefully Jordan Westburg can stay healthy and Blaze Alexander can show that what he did from late April – getting hurt just before the All-Star break wasn’t entirely fluky.

This is his lineup and his clubhouse and Father Time is undefeated and his presence didn’t prevent Henderson from completely falling apart this season (.675 OPS) and it didn’t turn a streaky and middling and swing-and-miss and feast-or-famine offense from being anything but that this season – The Elias Way of Extreme Baseball Failure will always prevail over all – and as he creeps to age 35 good luck with that.

Troubling Signs

Alonso will end up with 30 home runs and 100 RBIs in all likelihood and those are big boxes to check. After a very rough indoctrination to Camden Yards – left field twice butchered by Elias – Alonso has settled in since July and his home/road splits are negligible. That’s encouraging.

However, home runs are his calling card above all else, the AL East is a loaded division in regards to elite pitching, and his homer rate is 4.9%, lowest of his career and a far cry off the 7% from the season before. That’s due in part to him not doing quite as much damage against fastballs as usual, and we know what happens with that as average FB velos keep shattering records and power hitters grow older and lose some of their twitch and the synapses fire a fraction of a second slower.

Here’s what Alonso has done against fastballs since the Covid-shortened season.

FB% XBH – HRs AVG/SLG

2026 55% 25 – 16 .270/.500

2025 55% 48 – 28 .306/.614

2024 58% 41 – 23 .264/.522

2023 57% 43 – 28 .239/.542

2022 60% 34 – 20 .270/.484

2021 61% 38 – 17 .295/.532

He’s going to need more protection around him as he grows older. Westburg drives people in when healthy, but man that’s not often. Basallo is the most prodigious under-22 power hitting catcher in MLB history (he turns 22 this week) and I believe he is a monster in the making.

This part of why its imperative the Orioles ride Mayo and Holliday as much as possible down the stretch to start seeing how the pieces fit for next season, especially with Henderson heading out of the picture. It’s conceivable that this is the best season they get out of Alonso and the front office had best be mitigating against that worst-case scenario, though we know by now that’s not how Elias operates.

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