Pete Alonso’s Career Trajectory Explained: Five-Year Outlook for Former Mets Slugger

One of my father’s favorite sayings and trust me, many of the others are not fit to print was: “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”

It’s a wonderfully sneaky line, and like most good wisdom, it works on more than one level. The figures themselves, the numbers, are factual. They are what they are. But the figuring, the interpretation, the selection, the framing of those numbers? That’s where things can get slippery. With enough creativity, or agenda, even honest data can be coaxed into telling a dishonest story. It’s a reminder that statistics don’t think for us; people do sometimes carefully, sometimes conveniently.

That idea has stuck with me my entire baseball-writing life. I should begin, once again, with a confession, because baseball discussions feel healthier when everyone admits their biases up front.

I am not an analytics first guy.

I don’t lead with acronyms, I don’t worship at the altar of heat maps, and I don’t pretend I know what Pete Alonso’s launch angle was on a Tuesday night in April unless it cleared the fence and caused a small panic in the left-field seats. I still believe baseball is best understood with your eyes, your memory, and your gut, preferably one trained by decades of watching this sport humble smart people.

That said, and this is where I lose half the internet, I do believe that comparing players who looked similar at the same points in their careers is one of the best ways to get a feel for where a player’s arc might be headed. Not guarantees. Not predictions carved into stone. Just historical context. As Winston Churchill famously said, those that fail to learn from history are doomed to Re-Pete it. See what I did there.

Which brings us, inevitably, to Pete Alonso.

Pete just completed his age 30 season, and it was a strong one. He played every day. He hit for power. He drove in runs. He did the thing he always does, which is make baseballs question their life choices. Through age 30, Alonso’s home run total places him squarely in a very specific historical neighborhood, populated mostly by power-hitting first basemen whose careers took, let’s call it, a variety of turns.

Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge something else that tends to get lost in these conversations. Players today are in better shape than players of the past. They train year-round. They eat better. They recover faster. They have technology, nutrition, and conditioning advantages Babe Ruth could only have dreamed about while hot-dogging his way through the American League.

That said, and this matters, he is more Gabe "Fluffy" Iglesias than Gabe Kapler. Let’s not pretend Pete Alonso is the finest physical specimen in baseball. He’s durable, and durability counts. Playing every day matters. But Pete’s value is built on power, availability, and consistency, not elite athleticism or defensive excellence. That’s not a criticism. It’s a description. And historically, players built this way tend to age in fairly predictable patterns.

To understand those patterns, it helps to look backward.

Below is a simple chart, no math, no formulas, showing how several power-hitting first basemen performed through age 30 and then from 31 to 36. The players come from Baseball Reference, and the chart uses a simplified version of Bill James’ similarity scores from his book The Politics of Glory. It shows the player most similar to each one for each season. Think of it less as analytics and more as baseball archaeology.

A quick but necessary clarification. Mark McGwire is a true outlier. Not just statistically but chemically. Whatever conclusions we draw from this group, McGwire needs an asterisk the size of the Shake Shack line on Free Fries Friday at Citi Field. His post 30 improvement is real, but it exists in a category all its own and doesn’t offer much guidance for players operating under modern testing and human biology.

Which brings us to the bigger, sobering picture.

None of these men are Hall of Famers.

Let that sink in for a moment.

These are not fringe players. These are middle-of-the-order sluggers, All-Stars, MVPs, faces of franchises. And yet, for one reason or another, peak too short, decline too steep, narrative too messy, Cooperstown never came calling. Power alone, it turns out, is not a lifetime membership card.

That’s why Pete Alonso’s career arc matters so much right now. He’s at the age where history starts to whisper instead of shout.

So what happens over the next five years?

My best guess, and that’s all this is, is that Pete remains Pete for the next two or three seasons. He is still a middle-of-the-order force with power and run production, maybe a tick down in average and a few more strikeouts, but still firmly in the heart of the lineup. After that, history and the aging curves of comparable big sluggers suggest some regression. Not a cliff, not a collapse, just gravity doing what gravity does. Based on similar players, Chris Davis, Cecil Fielder, Richie Sexson, Glenn Davis, Tony Clark, Ryan Howard, Tino Martinez, Nate Colbert, here’s a rough peek at what the next five seasons might look like, assuming no freak injuries, and Mets fans know that Pete’s running style is not the most graceful. Even though he’s rarely missed a game, the pulled-hamstring gods are bound to catch up with him sooner or later:

Now, if we strip away emotion, this is also where Matt Olson enters the conversation.

Olson is one year older than Pete. He has two Gold Gloves. He has played all 162 games in each of the last four seasons, which is either remarkable durability or evidence that the Braves have discovered sorcery. He’s also signed through 2029 on an eight-year, $168 million contract, $21 million AAV, with a team option in 2030. Atlanta locked that in before inflation, free agency, and the Dodgers rewiring of the market.

Pete, by contrast, signed a five-year, $155 million deal. Shorter term. Bigger annual bite, $31 million AAV. More pressure packed into fewer seasons.

The difference between the two players isn’t who hits the ball harder. It’s margin for error. Olson brings elite defense that will still matter even if the bat slips a little. Pete’s glove is serviceable. He scoops up balls that would have been errors for half the infield, but his flips to first carry the ever-present risk of sending someone to the IL. His bat, meanwhile, needs to be the thing, not just a thing.

Both men are similar in age and profile, and both are suitable comps. But the $10 million-a-year difference, combined with Olson’s Gold Glove and proven durability, makes the comparison stark. Even if Pete transitions to DH in his mid-30s, the projections for ages 34 and 35 don’t scream “$31 million man.” Take all the emotion out of it, and it’s easy to see why, once a contract stretches over three years, the Mets said "I’m out” faster than Mr. Wonderful would on Shark Tank if someone pitched a Yoenis Cespedes Boar Hunting Kit.

Olson likely ages more quietly. The bat may soften, but the glove stays elite, and the overall value remains steadier. Atlanta didn’t just pay for home runs; they paid for insulation.

None of this is meant as an indictment of Pete Alonso. It’s context. And context matters more than comfort.

I don’t need a spreadsheet to know this. Power hitters age differently. Some adapt. Some don’t. The next chapter of Pete Alonso’s career won’t be written by how many home runs he hits at 30, but by how dangerous he remains at 33 and 34, when the bat slows just enough to force an adjustment.

That’s where careers are decided.

Not at the peak.

At the adjustment.

And that chapter, for Pete Alonso, is just beginning.