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| Pete Alonso |
By Brian Joura
In the 21st Century you simply don’t see power hitters who don’t rack up big strikeout numbers. Gone are the days when Joe DiMaggio could hit 46 HR while only striking out 37 times, like he did in 1937. Instead, it’s much more common to see someone like Kyle Schwarber, who hit 47 HR in 2023 while striking out 215 times. Which brings us to Pete Alonso.
In 2023, Alonso hit 46 HR and struck out 151 times. The strikeouts in a vacuum aren’t a big problem. But it’s alarming how they come, or at least it is to me. If a pitcher beats you with velocity or paints the corners with his offspeed stuff, all you can do is tip your cap. But when you flail at pitches with no chance of hitting them, that’s where it gets frustrating to me.
The great pitchers get batters to swing at pitches way out of the strike zone because they look like strikes out of their hand. But at some point, hitters have to realize that they’re letting run-of-the-mill pitchers get them out with non-competitive pitches that were never going to be strikes, because they were so eager to swing the bat.
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