Pete Alonso Brings Career-Best Hit Streak Into Saturday, As Orioles Limp Through August

If you were wondering if Pete Alonso has ever had a better two-week tear than the one he is on right now carrying the Orioles offense, the answer is, yes.

Barely.

He had a stretch of 13 games as a youngster in 2019 where he did slightly more damage from an OPS standpoint with the Mets – he left New York their all-time leader in homers – but he also wasn’t carrying the weight of a massive new free-agent contract at the time and wasn’t being expected to keep a floundering franchise afloat that has fallen well short of the lineup baseball failure Mike Elias claimed he would boast.

Alonso has been a one-man army for the Orioles in the second half, with Samuel Basallo and Blaze Alexander injured and once-top prospects like Gunnar Henderson and Colton Cowser - HYPER faltering to staggering depths. Without him doing extreme damage – and also batting nearly .500 in his last 13 games – this team (62-67) wouldn’t even be on the outskirts of the final Wild Card spot.

Alonso enters Saturday’s game against the Yankees on a 13-game hitting streak, he produced two more hits and another homer and three more RBIs on Friday to snap a four-game losing skid. He has a ridiculous .480/.544/.940 slash in that span – 1.489 OPS – but it’s not the most impactful such span in his career.

A Little Better Once Before

Here’s the five best 13-game stretches of Alonso’s career by OPS (courtesy of the amazing STATHEAD feature on baseballreference.com)

Team Span OPS HR RBI BA OBP SLG

NYM 2019-06-11-24 1.493 6 15 .422 .559 .933

BAL 2026-08-08-21 1.484 7 14 .480 .544 .940

NYM 2025-04-02-16 1.396 4 17 .435 .526 .870

NYM 2019-06-11-23 1.370 6 15 .370 .500 .870

NYM 2019-03-30-4-13 1.366 6 17 .370 .453 .913

It’s pretty difficult to quantify just how important his power has been to a team that got almost nothing in terms of slug from Adley Rutschman after the first three weeks of the season until they dealt him. Henderson and Cowser have had lost seasons, and they were expected to combine for legit homer totals. Taylor Ward was supposed to hit 30 homers and he barely swung the bat and just wanted to walk.

Basallo was a top three run producer for them when he went down and Alexander was in the top 10 in wRC+ from April 28th through the All-Star break (he broke his hand hit by a pitch just before that).

Alonso has 3.8 WAR per baseballreference.com and Henderson is second among remaining Orioles at 2.0. Alonso has 10 more homers and 34 more runs driven in that anybody on this roster.

Here’s the Orioles leaders for August (minimum 20 plate appearances)

Player OPS PA HR RBI BA OBP SLG

Alonso 1.147 79 7 16 .380 .443 .704

Coby Mayo .842 56 3 7 .250 .304 .539

Henderson .808 79 2 4 .242 .405 .403

Tyler O’Neill .795 56 3 6 .250 .357 .438

Dylan Beavers .769 50 4 9 .234 .280 .489

Yeah, four RBIs from Henderson this month folks. He’s gone, and they’ll be selling low on him but with two years of control and no extension possible, the entire industry knows what’s up. Whether Elias is rightfully is terminated along with entire cast of overpaid minions or he’s kept on, Alonso will have to hope Basallo and others (a healthy Jordan Westburg would be huge) can form a power core around him.

In the meantime, even with that recent calf issue, he’ll be in the lineup for all 162 games if it’s up to him, and trying to keep mashing the ball like he has been.

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