Jon Meoli: This isn’t the Pete Alonso the Orioles signed up for, but this is still what they need

There’s a long list of concerns that comes with a contract like Pete Alonso’s — the aging curve, the motivation after securing that life-changing payday and the attendant expectations chief among them.

The last was never one I considered valid for Alonso, who had spent his entire major league career under the spotlight in New York and has never had a moment in his big league life without dealing with pressure.

So it was interesting to hear the Orioles’ party-line explanation this weekend amid his slow start basically came down to Alonso trying to hit everything he was being thrown — the classic “trying to do too much” approach, right down to maybe being overprepared.

Reading between the lines, the expectations of his $155 million contract and the role he was signed to play as a thumper in the middle of the lineup have a lot to do with it. What he showed Sunday, and has shown throughout with how he has handled it, is exactly what the Orioles needed at this time last year and by the looks of it are going to need again.

At this time of the season, you just can’t break. He isn’t, and the Orioles are going to need to follow his lead after a weekend when a quarter of their position player group ended up on the injured list or bound for it.

Alonso’s first 15 games in an Orioles uniform haven’t been satisfying on the surface. He’s homered just once and has a .581 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. You can open the hood and, as I imagine most actual mechanics do, see whatever you want to see.

You can see his dipping bat speed and chalk it up to expanding the strike zone and thus not swinging with conviction, as manager Craig Albernaz did, or something else. You can look at his high exit speeds and say things will work out, or look at the fact that he’s basically not hitting the ball in the air to the pull side and wonder if something is structurally different with his swing, or combine the two and not know what to think.

The only wrong thing to do is simply to declare it’s already gone bad for him in Baltimore. We know what it looks like when a well-paid first baseman doesn’t have it anymore, and this isn’t it.

But we also know what it looks like when the slow starts, injuries and compounding pressure turn a team into dust. It was this one, last year. And there’s been no indication that the universe is going to let up on this Orioles team just because last year was as rough a ride as anyone could imagine.

They’re already without Zach Eflin after season-ending elbow surgery, and this weekend they put Tyler O’Neill on the concussion injured list, placed Adley Rutschman (ankle) on the injured list and announced Ryan Mountcastle has a broken bone in his foot.

They could welcome Jackson Holliday back soon but will need him at his best as basically every regular not named Gunnar Henderson and Taylor Ward is trying to find it at the plate (though Leody Taveras could find a bigger role now).

Pete Alonso congratulates Samuel Basallo on Sunday after the catcher’s two-run home run in the first inning. (Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)

They’re going to need Alonso to be a lot better than he has been. My personal perspective is it’s going to be as simple for him as getting back to attacking and punishing fastballs. And he needs to be part of the solution to staying afloat through April as injuries pile up and slow starts grow into causes for concern, not have his own issues go into the latter pile.

Sunday was progress on that front. The only progress that matters, though, is going to be that final bit when you well and truly feel he’s on the other side of this early-season skid. The same goes for the Orioles as a whole, and they’re getting there, too. You can’t win anything in April, but we saw last year that you absolutely can lose everything if you’re not careful.

Everything the Orioles dealt with last year, they’re dealing with again — though less so on the rotation front, which feels important. Everything Alonso is dealing with, his new peers in the clubhouse did as well. None of them needs to see Alonso persevere through it to learn anything; 2025 taught them plenty.

But it’s one thing to learn a lesson and another to enact it. Alonso, a needle-moving signing in many ways but at its core one meant to move the needle on the field, is part of the latter. He’s singularly qualified to let all the pressure and expectations and scrutiny roll off his shoulders, because that has been his existence since he debuted in 2019.

The Orioles as a whole need to do that to have any chance of this season being what they want it to be. It seems like every loss of their seven so far has sparked some sort of panic, and I don’t see a world where that ends, sadly.

For them to keep on this slow climb back to contention, they need to not let that break them. Alonso hasn’t so far. And that means something.