Pete Alonso Mets situation

There can be no question, now or ever, how much the Mets needed Pete Alonso on Oct. 3 in Milwaukee during Game 3 of their National League Wild Card series against the Brewers, when they were down, 2-0, in the ninth inning and about to lose their season.

Devin Williams, at that time still the Brewers’ star closer, was on the mound, and Alonso was at the plate with two men on. That was the moment when Alonso provided one of the great, rousing moments in Mets postseason history, hitting a ball over the right-field wall that he seemed to know was gone before anybody else in American Family Field did.

That swing would ultimately win the game for the Mets and win them a shot at the Phillies, whom they beat in the next round. That carried their season all the way to Game 6 against the Dodgers, the eventual champs, in the NL Championship Series.

So the Mets really had never needed Alonso more than they did that night, even after a sub-standard regular season in terms of home runs and RBIs, the way they had needed his home run bat since he’s shown up in the big leagues and broke the rookie home run record with 53.

It’s like they say in that television commercial. Life comes at you fast.

It’s happened that way since Oct. 3 for one of the very best homegrown sluggers the Mets have ever had, one of the most popular players they’ve had since he arrived at Citi Field to hit all those home runs, after arriving at Spring Training not even sure that he might make it north with the big club.

“Words can’t explain,” Alonso said of his home run after Game 3 in Milwaukee that night. “It’s unreal.”

Maybe Alonso thinks the same way now about his current circumstances, less than two years after reportedly turning down a seven-year, $158 million offer in 2023, made to him before Scott Boras became his agent. That was during a season when Alonso was on his way to hitting 46 more home runs, the most he’d hit since his record-breaking rookie year, with 118 RBIs.

Clearly he thought at the time, even before he signed on with Boras, that he could do better in free agency. But that was before his numbers all dropped the way they did in his walk year, with home runs down to 34 and RBIs down to 88. His slugging percentage and OPS have dropped right along with them. And that was before Boras’ biggest client — Soto — rang the bell the way he did with his $765 million contract.

“Pete knows who he is,” Alonso’s former manager, Buck Showalter, once said about him, with sincere admiration.

But this is about where he is, in this free-agent market, with the Mets now having Soto to hit behind Francisco Lindor.

Mets owner Steve Cohen and David Stearns, the team’s head of baseball operations, know what they saw from their team last season, especially after Alonso’s season-saving home run against the Brewers. They saw how the Mets then handled the Phillies and how they went toe-to-toe with the Dodgers before coming up two wins short of their first World Series since 2015.

Everything they have done this baseball winter, starting with the signing of Soto, has been about making it to the World Series this time after coming as close as they did — as improbable as it was after they were 22-33 at the end of May. And with each passing day, as the calendar moves baseball closer to the time when pitchers and catchers report to Florida and Arizona, it seems that the Mets and Alonso are still as far apart as they could be. And the Mets know they have some flexibility, with the option of moving Mark Vientos to first base and giving Brett Baty another shot at third, or exploring the idea of adding another corner infielder via free agency or trade.

None of this means that Alonso is definitely gone, or that there could still be enough compromise from both sides to keep Alonso with the Mets. It just doesn’t appear to be the way to bet. He is a first baseman about to enter his age-30 season. His numbers dropped last season, at the worst possible time for him. He didn’t have an awful year, by any measure. You add it all up and Aaron Judge is still the only player in baseball with more home runs than Alonso since Pete’s rookie year. He just took a step back at the worst possible time.

Soto was brilliant for the Yankees in his own walk year, and he will begin his Mets career in his age-26 season. Maybe everyone, the Mets included, would be looking at all of this differently if they didn’t sign Soto. But they did.

We know where Soto is going to be when Mets pitchers and catchers report to Port St. Lucie, Fla. Nobody can say the same right now about Pete Alonso. Life comes at you fast.