It feels a little silly to say that I didn’t see this coming. Mike Elias has been vocal for weeks that they were looking to spend this offseason, he gave several quotes saying things like “We’re looking to inject talent into the lineup and we’ll worry about the positional fit later” and it was widely reported that they were meeting Pete Alonso yesterday.
The signs were there.
But the whole time in the back of my mind I couldn’t shake the thought that there was NO WAY Mike Elias is going to go from being Mr No Multi Year Deals Ever to giving out a 5 year contract for a 31 year old first baseman. I enjoyed thinking about what the lineup would look like with Alonso in the 4 hole but at no point did it feel especially real. And then suddenly it was.
In today’s blog we’ll discuss who Pete Alonso is and how this contract impacts the rest of the Orioles offseason as well as their long term outlook.
Pete Alonso
I don’t think the “Who Pete Alonso is” section of the blog needs to be very long. He’s played his entire career in a major market, he hit a walkoff homer in the playoffs last year and he’s the home run derby guy. Pete’s not exactly a deepcut, in 10 years if you’re playing name some guys and you say “remember Pete Alonso” you’re not going to get any credit for that pull.
However I do think that the way that his free agency played out last year and the way he’s been discussed since has led to him becoming underrated. So what’s this guy really bringing to the table?
Durability
I’m putting durability first because I think it sets the table for everything else he does being valuable. A player can have all the talent in the world but if they only play in half the games then that doesn’t really help the team.
Since Pete Alonso debuted in 2019 the Mets have played 1,032 games. Pete Alonso has missed only 24 of those games. It’s an incredibly impressive track record of durability and if there’s one team in all of baseball that can appreciate that it should be the Orioles.
Availability is something that the Orioles really struggled with last season. They only had 2 position players reach the 100 games played threshold. That’s not a high threshold for so few players to reach. They need a lot of guys to be a lot healthier but signing someone you can depend on to play every day relieves a lot of that pressure.
Power
Last season the Orioles didn’t have a single player reach 20 home runs. Pete Alonso’s lowest (non Covid season) homer total is 34. That is a remarkably high floor for power production. Home runs are important, every year the teams that hit the most homers are usually the best teams in the league. Here is where the team that won the World Series ranked in home runs each year since 2021.
2021: 3
2022: 4
2023: 4
2024: 3
2025: 2
Taylor Ward is a good power hitter and acquiring him (even if the way he was acquired was confusing) made the Orioles offense better. Pete Alonso is an elite power hitter acquiring him makes the Orioles offense a lot better. If you go to his Baseball Savant page and hit play on the animation thing and just watch the xSLG, Barrel % and Bat Speed sliders every year, you’ll notice as other sliders jump up and down from red to blue those 3 stay red every year of his career.
Veteran Leadership
At the end of the 2025 season multiple Orioles players told the media that the team needed veteran leadership. I don’t think that Alonso is the give a ra-ra speech in the locker room type but his example as a veteran player who shows up to play everyday with enthusiasm should have a positive impact on this group.
Last season there was a small story around the fact that Jackson Holliday had a hot streak at the plate as a result of a tip he got from Kyle Schwarber when we played the Phillies. I think it’s awesome that Schwarber is the kind of guy who’s willing to help young players and it would have been cool to have him around full time but Pete Alonso also knows about dividing the plate into thirds and attacking pitches you can drive. Being around an elite power hitter everyday will benefit the Orioles young hitters.
It’s a nice bonus that he has legit postseason experience. Over 16 career playoffs games he has a .278/.429/.574 slashline. He’s played in hostile environments like Philadelphia and Los Angeles and last year he had his famous walkoff homerun off Devin Williams. He’s a playoff guy.
He’s not a perfect player but he is a significant upgrade to the lineup which is why I think the much more interesting part of this signing is what does this mean for the rest of the Orioles offseason and long term team building strategy.
Is this a bad contract?
To this point in the blog I have not mentioned how much money the Orioles are paying Pete Alonso so I’ll go ahead and do that now. The contract is for 155 million over 5 years, nothing deferred. More details will come out later about potential escalators but 5 years 155 is the base.
So the question you start with is, did we overpay?
The short answer is yes, but that’s because when you’re signing a free agent that other teams want, if you want to win the bidding war you have to go beyond what an analytical/value driven front office would consider a good deal.
All teams have smart people who are doing projections and determining what a player is worth. Although they’re not all the same projections they end up in similar places as far as years and AAV so it usually comes down to who is going to be the team that offers the extra year and that’s who gets the player.
So is a 5 year contract for Pete Alonso a year too long? Maybe, but if the offer had been 4 years 120 million instead of 5/155 chances are he’s the first baseman for the Boston Red Sox next season.
So that is where I give Mike Elias credit for showing growth from last year. Last season the Orioles with the few free agents they tried and failed to land it seemed like the story was that the Orioles were trying to get free agents to sign shorter team friendly deals and the result was what you saw in 2025.
This offseason it appears they have learned from their mistake. It started with the Kyle Schwarber offer when they tied the Phillies with a 5 year 150 million dollar contract offer. When I saw they went to 5 years my confidence that they would sign a big free agent this offseason doubled. Honestly seeing them offer 5 years 150 caught my attention more than if they had offered 4 years 150 just because I know how badly they didn’t want to offer that 5th year and they plugged their nose and did it.
Anyway back to Pete.
I’ve seen some people commenting calling it a really bad contract and it drew plenty of comparisons to Chris Davis. While I’ll admit it’s a little longer than ideal I don’t really see how this is a bad contract. For a couple reasons.
Reason #1: 5 years is not actually that long of a contract.
Pete JUST turned 31, this contract is going to take him through his age 35 season. 35 is not 40, at 35 there’s a decent chance Alonso is still a productive player. You look at some of the big contracts handed out and how old those players are going to be at the end of those deals and there’s just no way you can imagine them still being viable players. There’s simply no way 40 year old Xander Bogaerts is at all helpful to the 2033 Padres.
I wouldn’t bet on 35 year old Pete Alonso to win the MVP but the prospect of paying a 35 year old first baseman is not frightening. Especially since it’s first base. A 35 year old centerfielder or shortstop would make you nervous just because the decline in athleticism would directly impact their ability to provide value but first basemen tend to age ok.
Freddie Freeman was just productive at 35, Paul Goldschmidt won the MVP at 34 and even Jose Abreu was a 4 WAR player at 35.
So in general first basemen can age gracefully and I think Pete Alonso specifically is the kind of player who will still be good in his mid-thirties. Nothing in his profile jumps out and yells “Watch out if I get any less athletic I won’t be able to perform” He’s already slow and bad at defense so it’s not like those aspects of his game are going to “fall off”. He strikes out a bit but not so much that you worry that if he gets any slower it’s going to be untenable.
I was listening to Rates and Barrels yesterday and they were discussing how age 33 is a big drop off point for bat speed and that around that age players tend to lose 2 mph of bat speed. Their argument was that Kyle Schwarber has good enough bat speed that if he loses 2 mph of bat speed he’d still have elite bat speed and I’d say the same thing for Pete. His average swing speed in 2025 was 75.3 mph so if in the last 2 years of this contract his average swing speed goes down 2 mph it would still be above 73 mph about as fast as Colton Cowser is currently swinging it.
So the contract isn’t that long and I’m actually optimistic that Alonso will age gracefully. There’s always the concern of injuries but that injuries can happen to anyone. Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and Adley Rutschman are all in the prime of their lives and they were all super injured this year. Does that make drafting them a mistake?
Reason #2: Even if Alonso ages poorly the value of increasing the ceiling of the Orioles during the Gunnar Henderson window is worth the fallout in the years that follow.
This one is a little trickier to explain but hear me out.
The Orioles are in the middle of a very special window where they have multiple really good players and most notably a generational superstar shortstop on their team and they don’t have to pay them anywhere near what they’re worth.
Based on the front offices messaging there is a tendency to believe that this is just the beginning of a steady stream of young talent but what the Orioles did from 2019 to 2022 hitting on that many 1st and 2nd round picks and having them mostly all make it to the majors and play really well on pre arb contracts is really rare.
Gunnar Henderson is the most rare part of it all. His 2024 season might be the best Orioles season you see for the rest of your life. There are entire franchises who have never had a player put up over 9 bWAR in a season. The last White Sox player to put up over 9 bWAR in a season was teammates with Shoeless Joe Jackson.
I would like Gunnar Henderson to retire as an Oriole but they’re only guaranteed 3 more seasons with him. Once he hits free agency even if the Orioles offer him the most money he’ll have enough suitors offering him more money than he could ever spend that he can pretty much pick where he wants to go.
Even if they do manage to extend him these are the last 3 seasons where he won’t be very expensive. So now is the time to spend some money and go all in on these 3 seasons.
That’s where Pete Alonso is a good fit. The next 2-3 seasons should be near peak seasons for Pete where it would be fair to expect an OPS+ somewhere between 130 and 150. Basically he’s being paid to be the 30+ homer 100+ RBI offensive engine that helps power the Orioles to the playoffs each year. He raises the team’s offensive floor.
They can’t guarantee themselves a World Series but by signing Pete Alonso and hopefully some pitching at some point in the next few weeks they can at least say they gave it a real shot while they had Gunnar in arbitration. 2025 showed the Orioles how quickly you can blow a year of your competitive window if you just sit around hoping that prospects take a leap. Orioles fans should be relieved that they’re not going to repeat that mistake.
Of course the bill does come due on “going for it”. I already made my case that I think that the last few years of Pete’s deal won’t be so bad but let’s suppose they are. Let’s suppose in the last 2 years of this contract he’s an often injured platoon bat worth about 0.2 WAR per season.
Here are the concerns if we’re assuming the contract is going to be underwater for the last 2 seasons.
Does this impact the Orioles ability to retain Gunnar Henderson?
And
Does this impact the Orioles ability to sign starting pitching?
To me the answer to both of those questions is that it’s a matter of planning. You know when Gunnar is a free agent and you know how much you owe Pete Alonso that same year.
If you care about bringing Gunnar back you just have to keep that in mind when you’re adding big contracts from here on out. The 31 million you owe Pete in 2029 is not going to prevent you from signing Gunnar Henderson on its own. Just as a round figure let’s assume Gunnar’s AAV will be 40 million. Having a 31 million dollar contract and a 40 million dollar contract on the books at the same time is not crazy. However it’s rumored the Orioles are still in pursuit of top free agent pitching.
So as an example, if they sign Framber to a 5 year 150 million dollar deal then they’d be looking at paying 61 million dollars for those two players in 2029 so adding 40 million more for Gunnar would put you at over 100 million for just 3 players. Even though it’s not my money I understand how that could be difficult to stomach.
Like I said though you have time to plan. You can get creative. They have a front office brain trust that I assume is already working on this problem but here are some quick hitter ideas.
- Sign a pitcher to a front loaded deal where most of the money is in the first three seasons and then in the last whatever seasons the AAV is lower
- When it’s time to sign Gunnar package Pete with some prospects and get off the money like how the Twins got off the Carlos Correa money.
- Have Gunnar’s contract be backloaded so that the AAV is low in the 2 seasons where he overlaps with Pete and then spikes once Pete is off the payroll.
- Just run an absurdly high payroll for 2 seasons
I understand there are elements of this that are more complicated than I am making them seem. Look at it this way though. Now that this front office has done what they’ve always struggled to do in signing a big free agent they can get back to doing what they are really good at which is building the team around that contract as efficiently as possible.
I know that I just poopooed their incoming stream of talent a few paragraphs ago but the next wave of prospects has a lot of promising arms. Even if none of them are stars there should be some guys who can fill out the back of the rotation and bullpen and make it so you don’t have to spend so much money on #5 starters and relievers like the Orioles have had to do for the past few seasons.
If those roles are filled with guys making about a million dollars a year that helps offset having to spend 30 million dollars on 35 year old Pete Alonso. I just think it’s doable. Even if they sign another big contract this offseason I’m not going to feel like they’ve blown all the money and flexibility and it’s over now. Real teams have expensive players and work around them and it’s good that the Orioles are acting like a real team.
What happens next?
Jumping back to the present. One question I have not addressed is what do the Orioles do now with the 2 right handed first basemen that they already have on the roster?
I think the most obvious first step is that Coby Mayo has to be traded for pitching. You could have him be the backup first baseman or have him try to play right field but I think that would be a poor use of a player who has real trade value.
Mayo did enough at the end of the season that any front office that liked him as a prospect should be able to convince themselves that he’s the guy they thought he was. If he’s not enough to bring back a good pitcher by himself, if you package him with some prospects you should be able to land a pitcher that will upgrade the rotation.
Mountcastle is a bit trickier. His value has to be at an all time low so I’m not sure what you’d get back in a trade but rostering him to be a small side platoon DH/pinch hitter seems like an expensive and inefficient way to use a roster spot. Maybe you get a reliever or a backup centerfielder in a trade.
I also think adding Pete Alonso gives the Orioles enough right handed pop that it makes a Tyler O’Neil trade more likely. You saw when Alonso signed different outlets were posting the Orioles projected lineup and most of them did not include Tyler O’Neill. Right now he’s a short side of the platoon back outfielder and that’s also an expensive and inefficient use of a roster spot.
However there was an article recently that said that right handed outfielders are actually a bit of a commodity so maybe there is a market for O’Neill where the Orioles eat half the money left on his deal and swap him for a pitcher of some kind.
I’m kind of day dreaming here and maybe the Orioles don’t want to trade Mountcastle or O’Neill and they are excited to go all in on platooning players. If you keep both of those guys, look at this lineup you could deploy vs lefties.
1 Henderson, SS, L
2 Westburg, 2B, R
3 Ward, LF, R
4 Alonso, 1B, R
5 Rustchman, C, S
6 O’Neill RF, R
7 Cowser, CF, L
8 Mountcastle, DH, R
9 J Jackson, 3B, R
That’s not going to be fun for a lefty starter to try to get through twice.
Anyway I’m kind of day dreaming here but the point is that Mike Elias said they wanted to inject some life into this offense and they’d figure out the fit later. For the next 5 years Pete Alonso will be at first base in Baltimore and we’ll see how they build around him.
The Dishwasher 
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