Yonder Alonso: Useful in Deep Mixers?

For the first time in a couple of seasons the San Diego Padres have a healthy Yonder Alonso on their hands. And for the first time in as long as I can remember, the Padres have mortgaged a decent portion of the farm in attempt to win now — or, at least put more of a competitive product on the diamond and around Alonso in the lineup. The former first-rounder’s health along with the idea that these newly acquired stars could be reducing some of the pressure from the Friars’ first baseman could be a recipe for the breakout season we’ve been waiting for.

But we do need to define what I mean by “breakout.” He’s not — and will likely never be — a 25-30 home run guy that knock in 100 runs. He is, however, above average with the leather, a singles and doubles hitter that will also get on base via the free pass and a first baseman that can steal a handful of bags. So, by breakout, I guess I’m suggesting that Alonso has a real chance to reach his potential with a full complement of plate appearances this season — making him a useful commodity in many fake baseball formats.

The Padres have just 13 games under their belts to date, so we should be extremely wary of the small sample sizes we’re about to look at. Alonso is triple slashing .364/.453/.477 at the moment with six runs scored, seven runs batted in, one home run and one stolen base. Not sustainable, I get it. But the 28-year-old is taking walks at a 15.1% clip — an elite rate — which would easily surpass his previous single-season best of 10% in 2011 with a minimum 50 games played. These gains may be sustainable.

When looking further at Alonso’s plate discipline, we can see that he’s not offering at as many pitches outside of the zone as he has in the past. He currently sports a 27.5% O-Swing%, down from 30.9% and 29.3% in each of the last two seasons respectively, despite swinging at more pitches overall (48% Swing%).

Here are the pitches Alonso has offered at between 2012-2014:

And here are the pitches he’s offered at in 2015:

He’s still loving those pitches middle-and-up in the zone. You can’t blame him. But it appears as if he’s laying off the up-and-in offerings a bit more than he has in the past few years — so far. Maybe the need to “force it” isn’t there anymore?

There are some concerns of note with Alonso, too. He’s posted a career high ground ball rate that sits north of 65% in 53 plate appearances. Yuck. He also owns .405 average on balls in play — a recipe for the regression monster to drag down his batting average. Additionally, Alonso’s isolated power sits at .114 — a career low — and only has three extra base hits (two doubles and one home run) in 13 games. And he doesn’t seem to have a static home in the batting order just yet. He’s hit just about everywhere in the lineup so far — most frequently in the six or seven-hole, which impacts his ability to score and/or drive in runs.

At this point, Alonso is owned in your NL-Only leagues, but he could provide value to those in deeper mixed league formats as a low-risk corner guy as well. If your league uses on base percentage in lieu of batting average, even better. But your willingness to add Alonso shouldn’t hinge on just that one category. Updated Steamer projections suggest that he’ll slash .277/.346/.414 with 12 homers, 52 runs, 56 batted in and six stolen bases. I’m not exactly sure many will consider that a breakout, but the batting average/on base percentage will be useful in some mixers to offset some batting average liability guys if he can stay healthy and earn a full season’s worth of plate appearances. He’s owned in just 6% of Yahoo! leagues at the time of this writing.