Welcome to the 2025-26 edition of Smash or Pass, in which we examine potential free agent and trade targets to determine whether the Red Sox should pursue them and what it would take to land them. After taking a look at an intriguing young arm earlier this week, we now look for a middle of the order bat.
Who is he and where does he come from?
He’s 30-year-old Peter Morgan Alonso, and he grew up in Tampa, Florida as the descendant of refugees who fled to the United States during the Spanish Civil War. Given that Luis Tiant was frequently and famously linked to The Old Man And The Sea, Alonso would be the second Red Sox player to be tangentially related to one of Hemingway’s four major novels. Now we just need a second baseman who survived the retreat at Caporetto and a number two starter who frequently gets in drunken bar fights in Pamplona to complete the set.
Alonso has spent his entire career with the New York Mets. He entered free agency for the first time last offseason, returned to the Mets on a 2-year deal worth $54 million, and opted out after the first year to test free agency again.
What position does he play?
This is a particularly pertinent question for this exercise. Alonso is a first baseman, and he likes being a first baseman, despite the fact that he’s not particularly good at it:
But the Red Sox already have a first baseman (at least, in theory). And while Triston Casas has also not yet proven to be particularly good at it, he’s significantly younger than Alonso, came up with a decent defensive reputation, and has the potential to keep getting better while Alonso is almost certainly only going to get worse. So does this hurt the chances of the Sox signing the Polar Bear?
Eh, I wouldn’t worry about it. Alonso’s agent, Scott Boras, has already said that Alonso would be willing to spend “some” time at DH next year. This sounds a lot to me like the JD Martinez situation, in which a defensively limited free agent slugger who was reluctant to move to DH eventually came around with the help of a lot of money. And, given Casas’s health issues, Alonso might end up playing a lot of first anyway; you could even argue that the Sox would be better off with Casas DHing to protect his body with Alonso at first.
Well he’s not good at first base! But that’s not why the Red Sox would be paying him.
As you are no doubt already aware, Alonso is one of the game’s very best power hitters. Since his debut in 2019, he has hit 264 home runs. That’s the third-most homers in all of baseball during that span, behind only Aaron Judge and Kyle Shwarber, both of whom are two years older than Alonso. And while he’s far from the all-around offensive force that Judge is, he’s not just some three true outcomes plodder, either, as evidenced by his .253/.341/.516 career slash line and the fact that he led the league in doubles last year. In fact, his 22.8% strikeout rate last year was better than that of Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Trevor Story, Kristian Campbell, Romy Gonzalez, Jarren Duran, Carlos Narvaez, Rob Refsnyder, and Wilyer Abreu. The dude can hit.
Oh, and the other thing Alonso is really good at? Staying healthy. He has not missed a single regular season game over the past two seasons and has only been on the IL three times in his career, never for more than 10 days at a time.
Show me a cool highlight.
He’s the Home Run Derby king for a reason:
The general consensus is that Alonso will end up with a four-to-five year deal worth between $105-125 million.
Why would he be a good fit for the Red Sox?
It is never a bad idea to add one of the game’s best power hitters to your team. But it’s a great idea for this particular Red Sox team.
The lowest amount of homers Alonso has ever hit in a full season was 34. It’s been five years since the Red Sox had a player who hit as many as 34 homers in one season, and seven years since they’ve had a player do it from the right side of the plate. As Alex Speier wrote in this wonderfully-detailed analysis from last year, a pulled fly ball to left field at Fenway Park is quite literally the most productive type of batted ball in the entire sport. And the Red Sox, as currently constructed, are woefully unable to take advantage of this. Alonso is the perfect bat to slide into the middle of the lineup.
Moreover, Alonso comes across as the type of man who would thrive in Boston. He’s personable, funny, and, as evidenced by his home run derby performances, not at all uncomfortable in the spotlight. And hey, his wife grew up in the Boston area and the two met while he was playing in the Cape League. One of these days the whole “big free agent is married to someone with ties to the Boston area” thing is going to work!
Why would he not be a good fit for the Red Sox?
There are no baseball reasons why he would not be a good fit. If you’re the type of person who analyzes baseball as if teams get trophies for having the lowest payroll-to-WAR ratio, then you’re probably not that excited about giving $120 million to a soon-to-be 31-year-old first baseman, especially if you think Alonso would preclude the Sox from pursuing other big ticket free agents.
But, with respect to whether the Sox can afford Alonso and another big prize, let’s go over a few things:
- The Red Sox are worth close to $5 billion and likely generate well over $600 million of revenue each season.
- The Red Sox are currently about $40 million below the first CBT threshold.
- The Red Sox are currently about $80 million below the second CBT threshold.
- The penalties for exceeding the CBT thresholds are de minimis. Teams exceeding the first threshold incur only a modest financial penalty (the most the Red Sox have ever paid into the luxury tax was $13.4 million in 2019, which is just a shade more than they paid Liam Hendriks for five innings pitched over the last two seasons). While teams exceeding the second threshold have their first pick in the subsequent draft dropped 10 slots (and remember: only 71.5% of first round draft picks even make it to Major League Baseball).
- Money isn’t even real.
Pete Alonso is the perfect addition to the 2026 Red Sox lineup and he only costs money, of which the Red Sox have plenty. This is an easy smash for me. Sign Alonso, re-sign Alex Bregman (or splurge on Bo Bichette to play third if you’re worried about age), trade for a number two starter and we’ll see you in Fort Myers. Running a baseball team is easy!
