MILWAUKEE — Pete Alonso reminded us all again how fickle baseball can be, how one swing can change a season, a team, a legacy and maybe even the path of one’s whole career.
“Pete! Pete! Pete!” the folks yelled as Alonso negotiated the spartan concourse in the bowels of American Family Field on his way to the post-game presser, a celebration unto itself. These were of course all close friends and family waiting outside the victorious clubhouse. But they may as well have been everyday Mets fans, whose opinions and outlook regarding the slugging but slumping Met surely turned on one pitch, one swing and one point in time.
“It’s a really special moment,” Alonso said afterward in his usual understated way.
Actually, it’s quite likely a life-altering moment.
Let’s face it: no owner, no matter how well-to-do, is doling out $158M (what they offered last year, according to Joel Sherman), or more, for a star who took the virtual power collar in September and October. Oh, Alonso produced hits here and there, he played generally air-tight defense (one dropped foul pop-up late notwithstanding) and he dutifully reported for work every day, banged up or not, just as he did on his complete 162-game regular-season record.
Oh, club owner Steve Cohen and his financial folks (yes, even self-made billionaires have advisers) would have made Alonso some sort of perfunctory offer had the Mets gone out in the wild-card round with only whimpers from Alonso. But there would have been no excitement, no momentum, really no chance for Alonso to be back in a Mets uniform.
He looked to be going, going, gone.
Now, after his last-inning, wild-card-winning home run, the Mets and Alonso have something happy to talk about. The season was already a success, but with his mighty stroke, he turned these never-say-die Mets into the biggest and happiest story in sports. When they sneaked into the playoffs, thanks to the couple of cardiac comebacks in Game 161 and the first paper tiebreaker in baseball history (sorry D-Backs), they qualified as a beautiful local story.
Alonso took his Mets team national when he smacked star Brewers closer Devin Williams’ 3-and-1 changeup over the right-field wall, making the Mets the belle of this October ball, and truly changing everything. Francisco Lindor’s home run off the Braves’ Pierce Johnson, which made all this possible, was arguably the biggest home run in Mets history.
Now, three days later, Alonso topped even his longtime teammate Lindor, the all-everything, do-everything Met who’s their clear and obvious MVP. Alonso is supposed to be the second guy, but he wasn’t even that this year. Oh, his numbers look OK. He did hit 34 home runs. He did somehow post a 123 OPS-plus, the very same mark as last year.
But it all felt very empty. He never seemed to get big hits. It was always the kid Mark Vientos or the underrated, underpaid veteran Jose Iglesias, or of course Lindor. Until the home run that left Brewers fans crying in their Miller beers, Alonso’s most important five hits all came in the first half, based on win probability added.
That all changed when Williams tried a changeup on the outer half with Lindor and Brandon Nimmo on base. Alonso’s eyes undoubtedly widened.
“Just one of those horrible matchups for Williams,” one scout said. “His best pitch is the changeup. Alonso crushes changeups.”
Well, he crushed this one just enough, turning a 2-0 ninth-inning deficit into a 3-2 lead and creating an immediate pall in the sold-out stadium. Sadness pervaded the park of the small-market team that’s always a champion of the regular season but hardly ever gets it done in October.
(My theory: Milwaukee’s front office is smart enough to find enough bargains to dominate the little things that work over 162, but big and big-paid stars often win the day come playoff time.)
As for Pete, the slump is right there on his Baseball Reference page: no home runs since Sept. 19, not even an extra-base hit.
The slump became so pronounced, every time he came to bat, we’d remark to each other in the press box, “Pete’s due.”
Delivering insights on all things Amazin’s
Sign up for Inside the Mets by Mike Puma, exclusively on Sports+
Thank you
And now that he’s done what we all were waiting for, that’s all in the past tense. He was due, and he did it in style with his legacy swing that changed everything for the better.
Alonso doesn’t really acknowledge or address his failures. (Maybe he thinks it’s bad luck?) But everyone could fairly assume this uber-talent must have been pressing.
“Hopefully this lets him exhale and relax a little bit, and he may go on a tear,” one Met said afterward, saying what’s on everyone’s mind.
A lot of good things happened for the Mets this year. Vientos became a true power source. David Peterson, who saved the biggest Mets win in nine years, is a pitching star. If Pete is Pete again, who knows? They already progressed way beyond where almost anyone figured, but if Pete is Pete, who knows how far they can go?
