Mets lineup: Where Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo improved, how Francisco Alvarez can get better

Sometimes you reach the end of the season and don’t get a chance to write everything you wanted to write. You’ve got a few seeds of stories kicking around that you can’t really pursue in depth until next spring, and by then they won’t carry as much weight. So instead, you create an end-of-season notebook with nuggets of interesting information that don’t by themselves rise to the level of a full story.

Here are some reflections on the past season and plans for the offseason from Mets position players. We’ll do pitchers later in the week.

Pete Alonso

Back in spring training, Alonso talked to Will Sammon about a specific goal he had set for himself in 2023: dominating hitters’ counts.

In 2022, Alonso was worse than the average major-league hitter in 2-0, 3-1 and 3-2 counts — and in the 3-1 case, a lot worse. You can measure this with the stat sOPS+. It’s OPS+ for a specific split, so in this case, it looks at Alonso’s production in each of those counts and compares it to a league average set at 100. An sOPS+ of 150 means you’re 50 percent better than the rest of the league in that split.

Alonso was significantly better in all three counts this season — better than he’d ever been before.

That improvement manifested itself mainly in the long ball.

Hitting coach Jeremy Barnes talked up Alonso’s patience in those counts and his willingness to “take his walks when they come.” Alonso’s walk rate for the season was a tenth of a percentage point above last year’s, and even after reaching those specific counts wasn’t any better than in 2022.

Barnes’ point still holds. Alonso swung less often in those specific counts this year than last by a full 5 percentage points (58.5 percent of the time in 2022 to 53.5 this past season). He swung outside the zone in those counts 31.5 percent of the time, the best mark of his career. He swung a lot less often (15 percentage points less) up within the zone, where he does less of his damage.

Pete Alonso followed through in a big way with his plan to be better in hitters’ counts. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

Barnes saw that as evidence that Alonso was shrinking his target to where he could do the most damage, and the numbers bear that out. A larger chunk of Alonso’s swings on hitters’ counts this season came on pitches in the inner third and middle of the plate. And he hit 10 of his 46 home runs in 2-0, 3-1 or 3-2 counts this season, compared to three total in those counts last year.

“He’s capitalized on those situations where he’s looking for one pitch in one location; if they make a mistake, I’m going to jump all over it,” Barnes said.

Of course, Alonso’s numbers dropped in other situations this season, contributing to career lows in batting average, on-base percentage and OPS+. He was notably worse when behind in the count compared to previous years. Barnes contributed a lot of that to poor batted-ball luck; Alonso’s batting average on balls in play was just .205, well down from a career mark of .273 entering the season. That happened even as Alonso’s barrel rate was the second-best of his career.

“What we talked to Pete about was: It’s been a frustrating year; there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. But of the things we can control, we can’t forget that a lot of good things have happened,” Barnes said. “Pete’s hit the ball hard. We want him to continue doing those things.”

Brandon Nimmo

In late August, I wrote about Brandon Nimmo’s shift in approach that would allow him to hunt for more home runs — a change that resulted in Nimmo smashing his old career best in home runs by seven. He did so while posting the same batting average as in 2022 with an on-base percentage just four points lower.

So what does that mean for his offseason plan?

“It always helps with the confidence and preparation going into next year when you’ve shown for an extended period of time that you can do something,” Nimmo said. “Those are how I’ve built on things in the past: Try to focus on something, get better at it, and then use that offseason to cement it.”

I’ve written about Nimmo’s ability to concentrate on potential areas of improvement in his game and get better at them. This is how he’s improved at hitting lefties, at positioning himself defensively in center field, at staying on the field for more of the season. (Stolen bases remain an outlier here for Nimmo.) His shift to seeking power was one of the rare in-season adjustments Nimmo made, and that gives him more confidence he can build on it into next year.

A key part of the switch, according to Barnes, was Nimmo hitting more fly balls. Nimmo’s ground-ball rate for the season was the lowest of his career (outside of his injury-shortened 2019 season) and his fly-ball rate was the highest. That was most stark on balls Nimmo pulled, where turning a groundball into a fly ball does the most damage.

“Now it’s continuing to make those concepts his own and to take ownership over those movements. And then it’s taking this newfound mentality and finding the moments to be aggressive,” Barnes said. “I love the changes he’s made.”

Francisco Alvarez

Alvarez’s 25 home runs were the most by:

• a rookie catcher since Wilin Rosario in 2012 (and second-most since Mike Piazza in 1993)
• a Mets catcher since Piazza in 2002
• a Mets 21-year-old since Darryl Strawberry in 1983 (and second-most ever)
• a 21-year-old catcher since Johnny Bench in 1969 (and second-most ever)

So how do you improve on that?

“I think I can do better than that,” Alvarez said. “I want to do better with my batting average, I want to do better with my OPS, I want to take more walks, I want to have more RBIs, I want to do better with my defense, I want to have better communication with my pitchers. Everything.”

OK, then.

Alvarez said that all in English, by the way, in his first postgame media scrum conducted without the help of an interpreter — a sign already of his quick aptitude for improvement.

Alvarez’s numbers outside the power could certainly stand to improve. His OPS dropped below the league average thanks to a batting average of just over .200 and an on-base percentage well short of .300. And even given the 25 home runs, they came largely in spurts with long droughts between.

The Mets believe Alvarez’s slumping second half, in which he hit .174 with a .270 on-base percentage and .343 slugging percentage, can be blamed mostly on fatigue. He’d never caught more than 77 games in a season as a professional; he caught 104 this year between Triple-A Syracuse and the majors. That’s a big increase.

That didn’t manifest itself in any alteration of Alvarez’s effort level. To the end, Mets coaches and players complimented all the work Alvarez put in on a daily basis. And Barnes wondered if Alvarez swung too hard some of the time.

“He’s getting the pitch he wants and he’s swinging and missing. Part of that is effort level. He has a high motor and when he gets a pitch he wants, he’s trying to hit it out of the stadium,” Barnes said. “We don’t want to take who he is away from him, but we want to reduce the miss.”

Brett Baty

One emphasis for Baty going into the offseason will be improving against left-handed pitchers. Like most lefty hitters, Baty was better against righties during his minor-league career (.943 OPS to .830). However, he was still pretty good against southpaws.

That wasn’t the case this past season, when he hit .176 with a .211 on-base percentage and .474 OPS against lefties, compared to a .640 OPS versus righties. Bringing back sOPS+, Baty was 63 percent worse than the average left-handed hitter against left-handed pitching.

He walked just four times in 97 plate appearances against southpaws after running a walk rate of 9 percent against them in his minor-league career. If Baty doesn’t improve against left-handers, the Mets will have to start platooning him, at least.

Barnes was optimistic about the strides Baty made in the season’s final month, even if the results didn’t show up as much as the club would have liked. September saw Baty’s worst monthly OPS of the season, but his lowest ground-ball rate — an area of focus during his time down in the minors in August.

“We’ve really paid attention to his load, reducing how much head movement we have going on in our load, trying to keep his eyes as still as possible so we can make our decisions,” Barnes said. “I feel like he’s put together much better at-bats. I just like what it looks like.

“He has all the tools; it’s just a matter of being consistent, taking care of business against righties and improving against lefties.”

(Top photo of Brandon Nimmo: Bruce Kluckhohn/USA Today)