With free agency on the horizon at this time last year, first baseman Yonder Alonso experienced the kind of season in 2017 that would’ve made him very rich in the past. This winter was weird for a lot of players, though, so he was probably happy just getting a multi-year contract and not having to wait around for a job for months and months.
After hitting just 39 home runs through his first 2,343 big-league plate appearances, he blasted 28 dingers in 521 plate appearances last year. It wasn’t just the homers, either — Alonso was productive overall on offense. The left-handed hitter set new single-season career highs in runs scored (72), RBI (67), ISO (.235), walk rate (13.1%), wOBA (.366), wRC+ (132), and fWAR (2.4).
Despite all that, Alonso only managed to secure a two-year, $16 million guarantee (and one option year) with the Cleveland Indians right before Christmas. He ended up being one of the lucky ones upon seeing how the rest of the market shook out, but he’s also found himself in a great situation to keep the momentum of that breakout campaign going.
The Big Change
You don’t have to look very far to see what exactly made this change possible. It’s been talked about quite a bit since the results started flowing in. The below table shows how his batted-ball profile compares between what he did in 2017 to everything that came before it.
| Year | PA | LD% | GB% | FB% | Soft% | Hard% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-16 | 2,343 | 22.0% | 45.3% | 32.6% | 15.7% | 30.5% |
| 2017 | 521 | 22.8% | 33.9% | 43.2% | 13.2% | 36.0% |
What’s interesting is that the shift toward hitting more fly balls almost exclusively came from decreasing the frequency in which he hit ground balls. We found out last spring that Alonso had changed his mind about his offensive approach, and the results speak for themselves.
A Better Situation
Alonso’s 2017 performance becomes even more impressive once we remember where he played his home games. He spent 100 games with the Oakland Athletics before getting traded to the Seattle Mariners, both of which reside in parks that aren’t known for creating a ton of offense.
When specifically drilling down to home-run factor for left-handed hitters (thanks to Baseball Prospectus), Safeco Field and O.Co Coliseum ranked 14th and 15th in baseball, respectively. Meanwhile, Progressive Field checked in as a top-10 park with regard to dingers for left-handed hitters last year (they were 9th).
It doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but Alonso certainly has a better situation on his hands in 2018 and 2019 to keep this power surge going, especially when considering the lineup he’ll now be occupying.
The Indians posted a team wRC+ of 107 last season, which ranked third in baseball behind the Houston Astros (121) and New York Yankees (108). Although the Mariners and Athletics (102 wRC+ each) were also top-10 clubs in this metric, it’s another slight boost to Alonso’s stock.
Roster Resource has Cleveland’s newest first baseman projected to bat fifth in the order, meaning there will be plenty of opportunities to drive runs in with guys like Francisco Lindor, Jason Kipnis, Jose Ramirez, and Edwin Encarnacion potentially in front of him.
Going From Start to Finish
How could a guy that showed such a dramatic improvement only get a two-year deal? Well, a drop-off in production following the All-Star break didn’t exactly help — after hitting 20 homers and posting a 146 wRC+ in the first half, he only added 8 dingers with a much more normal 113 wRC+ after the midsummer classic.
It’s also worth noting that his ground-ball rate and fly-ball rate both got worse if we break his season in half.
| 2017 | LD% | GB% | FB% | Hard% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Half | 21.2% | 30.2% | 48.7% | 35.5% |
| Second Half | 25.0% | 38.9% | 36.1% | 36.8% |
While this is something to keep in the back of one’s mind when evaluating Alonso’s season-long performance, it’s still better than what he’d done in recent years. Those 8 second-half homers were more than any yearly totals from 2013-16, and his batted-ball numbers were mostly better during this rough patch when compared to the same period of time.
Plus, his spring-training stats basically mirror (they’re actually a little better) what he did last year before the breakout. We can’t put a whole lot of stock into those numbers, but they certainly foreshadowed what he eventually accomplished in 2017.
A year like the one Alonso just had used to mean a huge pay day as a free agent. He didn’t get the lucrative contract a few may have anticipated as recently as last summer, yet he has a great chance of keeping this up in Cleveland. And the Indians will gladly extract all the value they possibly can from this deal.
About Matt Musico
Matt Musico currently manages Chin Music Baseball and contributes to The Sports Daily. His past work has been featured at numberFire, Yahoo! Sports and Bleacher Report. He’s also written a book about how to become a sports blogger. You can sign up for his email newsletter here.
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