Falling Down

[Edgy MD]

One thing that makes watching Pete Alonso interesting is that the traditional first baseman's stretch simply does not seem to be in his arsenal. Maybe he cannot loosen his groin enough, maybe he cannot make glove adjustments from that position, or maybe he just hates it, but the stretching toward the thrown ball and putting his front foot way out to keep his balance — as shown below — is mostly not part of his game.



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What he does instead — keeping the leg facing the runner back — he seems to have made work for him (and maybe saved an injury or two). The tough part of that play — stretching his upper body beyond the center of his leg base — is that he almost always falls down. He has to really time the maneuver, to make the catch before his body really collapses on him, and still hold the bag with his back foot as he falls.



In this collection of his scoops, there are one or two traditional long stretches, but more frequently, he keeps his front leg further back, and makes the play falling, sometimes planting his right knee or his right hand, or sometimes rolling onto his hip and back, as his back leg falls or rolls off the bag just after his catch. It ain't Keith Hernandez, but it has gotten the job done.



[media=youtube]wtiP163Ed8c[/media]

[MFS62]

We don't want him to keep doing that if it might risk a groin injury.

Are there any films of Gil Hodges or Vic Power?

Those are the best two righty fielding first basemen I can remember. Maybe he could pick up some of their techniques.

Later

[ashie62]

Never really noticed he was tumbling over in these situations. It seems to be working. Good, because I can't unsee Harmon Killebrew doing his ASG split

[Frayed Knot]

He usually gets the job done even though the Romanian judge keeps giving him style point penalties.

[kcmets]

He's 5-10 times a better firstbaseman than when getting started.

He worked on it a lot. Don't change a thing.