Port Saint Lucie, Florida: Pete Alonso reached inside his locker for a piece of paper.
“It’s convenient to talk about this today,” he said.
After spending the last hour in a hitters’ meeting with the other position players of the New York Mets, Alonso had just arrived back in the clubhouse. He was given the sheet of paper with his name on it and his chase rate statistics from the previous year during the conference.
“So, good chase, according to this, is 25 percent and my chase is in that good range; it’s 27 percent,” Alonso said. “Average chase is 30. So, I am above average. But elite chase is 20. So, if I can get to 20, that’d be great.”
When Alonso conducted his first springtime press conference one week prior, the entire twenty minutes were devoted to discussing his contract status and upcoming free agency. But Alonso was once asked to evaluate his 2023 season and make a list of any future objectives. After enumerating his strong points, he struggled.In addition to putting up impressive conventional figures like 46 home runs and 543 versus fastballs, his best mark since 2019, he also pointed to an area he believed required work: chase rate, or the percentage of pitches that a batter swings at that is beyond the strike zone.
“One thing I didn’t do a good job of is my chase rate,” Alonso said. “My chase rate was pretty high or higher than I’d like it to be. I know I didn’t necessarily strike out as much as I have in the past but I definitely want to cut down on chase, maximize getting damage in the zone.”
Alonso believes that honing one’s mental game is the first step toward increasing chase rate. Considering “tightening up, understanding a pitch or scenario for what it is,” Alonso stated, is more important than simply trying to bludgeon a ball and hit it as far as possible.
Alonso has to balance realizing that his power has a high ceiling with restraining himself from trying to use it whenever and however he pleases. It is the old adage of “try not to do too much.” Interestingly, the strategy is also helpful for players in their platform years; the season leading up to free agency is stressful and may result in pressuring.
What happens when a player deals in both and wants to improve chase rate within a platform year?
To begin with, do players become more combative during the walk years of their contracts? Using contract statistics from Jon Becker of FanGraphs, we examined every player in the final year of their contracts dating back to 2020 in order to provide an answer to this issue. Next, we contrasted their career rates in those categories with their chase rates (the frequency with which they swung at pitches outside the zone) and swing rates.
It appears that players do, in fact, tend to chase more throughout their walk years. When comparing the variations based on playing time, the effect is negligible (they chase and swing approximately 1.5 percentage points more than they typically do), but it is still present. And almost two thirds of the players in walk years swing more and chase more than usual, regardless of where you put the playing-time barrier.
As you can see visually, most players are bunched near the “zero difference” line, but also very clearly more players are above zero (meaning they’re chasing more) than below it:
If you look at the colors, which indicate a player’s hitting performance in his walk year (more red indicates a better hit performance), you will also find that pursuing more did not always translate into a better or worse performance at the plate. More experimentation with this graphic is available at Tableau.
What is the significance of this effect? While it is true that last year’s slugging percentage (.211) on pitches outside the zone was significantly lower than that of pitches inside the zone (.492), it takes more than just basic math to get to that point as a batter. The hardest part of translating selectiveness at the plate into results is that power hitters need to be somewhat aggressive because pull power is best produced when the ball is out in front of the plate.
Put another way, there is not a strong correlation between chase rate and slugging % on its own. You start to get somewhere when you combine a player’s aggressiveness in the zone with their passivity on pitches outside the zone (or even more sophisticated variations of that metric), however the correlation may not be as strong as you would have thought.
For better or worse, though, one thing we can seem to anticipate from a player in their contract walk year is that they will be (somewhat) more aggressive.
For Alonso, the idea is to refine the aggression.
“It’s the same, like, when you’re racing a car,” Alonso said. “You can’t put the pedal to the metal going into a turn. You have to ease into it. Then hit the accelerator again. It’s the same principle. It’s mastering controlled aggression.”
FanGraphs reports that Alonso’s overall swing percentage decreased to 43.7 percent last year (he swings 47.2 percent of the time in his career). He started to choose his pitches more carefully, both within and outside of the strike zone. His career-best chase percentage of 27.4 percent was achieved.
Mets co-hitting coach Eric Chavez said Alonso’s chase rate would be fine if it remained in the area Alonso cut it to last year.
Chavez stated that cutting down on chasing and making wiser choices on pitches that are thrown so far outside of the strike zone that even if contact is made, the harm would be negligible are the keys. Those were dubbed “non-competitive pitches” by Chavez. Occasionally, the pitcher intentionally throws a strike, intending to fool the batter. Alonso wants to be more adept at recognizing that the pitcher is trying to walk him in these circumstances.
Having worked with Alonso for the past three years, Chavez claimed to have witnessed the development of Alonso’s mature approach at the bat. Given that Alonso is about to start his 29th season, it is reasonable to believe that he can put up some of his best performances before becoming a free agent. Increasing his chase rate could be the first step toward increasing his on-base percentage (his.206 batting average on balls in play from the previous season was 50 points below his lifetime average, and a simple regression to the mean would also help). Alonso has also been noted by several scouts to have space for improvement in terms of patience and walking. Alonso has a.342 career on-base percentage, but Chavez wants to see the
“The best version of Pete hasn’t come yet,” Chavez said. “It’s on its way.”
(Top photo of Pete Alonso: Gordon Donovan / NurPhoto via Associated Press)
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