Orioles might solve early lineup woes with one surprising Pete Alonso move

One month into Pete Alonso's tenure with the Baltimore Orioles, it is clear that he is struggling to adjust to his new home. Between the pressure of the big contract and playing for a new team for the first time in his career, something looks off with Alonso.

Alonso has mitigated the disappointment with shockingly good defense at first and with his intangible leadership skills. Offensively, he's been a hole in the lineup. Benching Alonso would be overly dramatic and reactionary, but until he breaks out of this slump, the Orioles need to move him out of the top half of the lineup.

One of the most frustrating trends of the season has been how often the Orioles are playing from behind. This is in part because the rotation has struggled, but also because the Orioles' offense has struggled to capitalize on scoring opportunities in the first inning.

Pete Alonso has squandered a lot of first-inning opportunities

The other three batters who have been consistently in the top four spots in the lineup have all been well above average at the plate. Taylor Ward's OBP is in the .400s, Gunnar Henderson is top 10 in baseball in extra base hits, and Adley Rutschman is slashing .333/.393/.627. That trio of hitters provides lots of opportunities for Alonso to drive them in, and so far this year, he just has not been able to capitalize on early opportunities with runners on base. Alonso is second on the team in strikeouts and grounding into double plays, and he's both of those things a lot in the first inning with runners on.

If the Orioles moved Alonso to the six spot in the lineup, they could put hotter hitters in those key middle-of-the-order spots where he's been scuffling and hopefully spark some first-inning rallies and allow their struggling rotation to pitch with an early lead.  

The question is who would jump Alonso in the lineup. You look at the Orioles' individual offensive stats, and you'll quickly find that most of their hitters have been as bad or worse than Alonso. The obvious choice to fill the four hole is Samuel Basallo, who hit there several times while Rutschman was out and is slashing .563/.632/1.000 over his last five games.

For the five-hole, it would depend on who was in the lineup that day, but Jeremiah Jackson makes a lot of sense for that spot. He's been hitting for a lot of power so far this season and his real weakness at the plate is that he makes so much contact he ends up grounding into double plays a lot and if he's batting fifth chances are if he's up to bat in first inning there are already two outs or a run already scored so the chances of him nuking a early rally are lessoned.

The six-hole is still a respectable spot in the batting order; it's technically the middle of the order still, and if Alonso were to be put there, it would take some of the pressure off him as he'd have many fewer at-bats with two outs where he's trying to create offense on his own. Alonso is too talented and has too much of a track record of success for these struggles to be permanent. Once his bat got going, he could easily slide back up to the top of the lineup, and narratively, he'd get a lot of credit for being a humble team, first guy.

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