Pete Alonso is doing something Friday night that he’s never done before.
Leading off in a big league ball game.
The former Mets slugger will hit at the top of the Orioles’ lineup when they bat against the Rays in Tampa Bay.
Alonso told MLB.com’s Jake Rill that his leadoff-less stretch goes back even further than that, saying it’s the first time he’s ever come to the plate to kick off a game.
“First time for everything. Why not?” he said, per Rill.
“I’m not saying me and him are the same guy, but I’m like [Kyle] Schwarber-adjacent, you know? … I can be the right-handed Schwarber, I guess. Why not?”
Like Schwarber, Alonso, who has rebounded after a slow start in Baltimore, is about as far from the prototypical No. 1 hitter as it can get.
The burly 6-foot-3, 245-pound home run hitter has registered a 25.3 mph sprint speed this season, ranking in the bottom 8 percent of major leaguers.
Stolen bases are barely a part of his game, having swiped just 23 bags in his eight-year career, although he’s already matched a career high with five this season.
Perhaps more fitting for the leadoff spot is Alonso’s .353 on-base percentage, which is comfortably above the MLB average and the kind of mark teams look for atop the lineup.
Through the first half of the season, Alonso hit third or fourth in every game he started for Baltimore.
Shortly after the All-Star break, Alonso started appearing in the two-hole, a spot he became familiar with for a time in Queens.
Alonso spent the vast majority of his time in a Mets uniform in the cleanup spot.
Heading into the game, Alonso is hitting .259/.353/.480 with 26 home runs and 77 RBIs for the Orioles, who signed him to a five-year, $155 million free agent deal over the offseason.
That contract looked ugly early on in 2026, with Alonso hitting .198 with just four home runs over the first month-plus before turning his season around when the calendar flipped to May.
