Pete Alonso is going back to the Mets. It always felt like the most likely outcome, and to be honest, it would’ve been super weird to see him in any other uniform. Alonso has never been the best player on the Mets, but he does the coolest and most valuable thing you can do on a baseball diamond — hit home runs — with great frequency. That, and an affable attitude that’s endeared him to the fans, has made him an institution in Queens.
Unfortunately, there was something of a disagreement over what all those contributions were worth. Alonso returns to his team of origin on a front-loaded two-year, $54 million contract that features an opt-out. If Alonso does what he’s done his whole career, he can test free agency again next winter, having pocketed $30 million. That’s a handsome one-year salary for any player, but far, far short of Alonso’s expectations.
According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, the Mets offered Alonso a seven-year, $158 million contract extension in the summer of 2023; this contract would’ve bought out Alonso’s last arbitration year and six seasons of free agency. The Polar Bear turned that down, reportedly in pursuit of a contract worth $200 million or more.
That was never going to happen. Since the mooted seven-year extension, both Alonso and the Mets have swapped out negotiators; Alonso signed with Scott Boras, while the Mets replaced Billy Eppler with David Stearns.
That’s significant. Last offseason, Boras had what might’ve been the first genuinely bad winter of his career. His big-ticket clients — Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, and Matt Chapman — were left without a seat into March, and all signed contracts with either a player option or an opt-out after the first season.
Those three players illustrate why Alonso’s contract structure works. Chapman and Snell performed well, and by year’s end, both had signed long-term deals worth well over $100 million. Montgomery was terrible, so bad he got called out in public by Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick. But because of the safety net his contract afforded him, Montgomery was able to exercise a player option and pocket $22.5 million more of Kendrick’s money.
I’m sure Montgomery would rather have had $100 million and a normal 2024 spring training, but it could’ve been worse. This being the week between the Grammys and the Super Bowl, I instinctively looked over my shoulder after I typed, “called out in public by Kendrick.”
And Boras needed to have that club in his bag. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago, Alonso would’ve gotten the contract he was looking for, but not now. Not even from the Mets. Cohen might count his wealth in the tens of billions of dollars, but you don’t amass a civilization-destroying level of wealth through wanton largesse. And Stearns developed his reputation as one of the sharpest front office operators out there by building winning teams in Milwaukee, despite not having two pennies to rub together. He knows better than most that a seven-year contract for Alonso would have aged quite poorly.
I said earlier that Alonso does the coolest, most valuable thing in baseball as often as anyone. Unfortunately, he does little else.
Alonso is a right-handed hitting, right-handed throwing first baseman. That’s already a rough profile, though not an insurmountable one. Paul Goldschmidt won an MVP in his age-34 season. Christian Walker, nearly four years Alonso’s senior, signed a three-year, $60 million contract with an Astros team that’s getting increasingly tightfisted. But Walker is the best defensive first baseman in the league. Alonso fields his position in a manner that leaves no doubt as to why his nickname has “bear” in it.
Goldschmidt routinely posted batting averages around .300 with walk rates in the mid-teens. Alonso will take a walk, but not to the same extent. And his other offensive skills are trending in the wrong direction. The big Floridian hit .271/.352/.518 with 40 home runs in 2022. Over the two seasons that followed, the headline numbers stayed the same — an average of 40 home runs and 158 games played — but his batting line dropped to .229/.324/.480.
One genuinely cool thing about the younger Alonso was his ability hit for huge in-game power while not striking out that much. But even that skill is in the process of deserting him.
Alonso is still mighty strong — I’d back him to out-squat anyone else on Boras Corp’s client roster. But bat speed usually only goes in one direction after age 30 for guys like this. Already, we’ve seen Alonso drop from a 140 wRC+ guy to a 120 wRC+ guy over the past three seasons. Small wonder that when the Mets said, “No, thank you,” to a long-term contract, Alonso couldn’t find a taker anywhere else in the league.
But on a two-year deal? Or, in all likelihood, an extremely expensive one-year deal? Hell yeah.
If we’re looking more than a couple years into the future, Alonso is probably going to be a DH, not a first baseman, with a bat that doesn’t quite merit the distinction. No longer a poor man’s Goldschmidt, Alonso is more like a rich man’s Rhys Hoskins. And I don’t know if you heard about this, but Stearns, Cohen, and Boras got together in December to put a different defensive nonentity in the middle of the Mets’ lineup through the 2039 season. That’s not even a real year.
But for now, Juan Soto can play right field just fine. As for the Mets’ lineup, it starts with two MVP-type players — Soto and Francisco Lindor — and declines rapidly after that. There’s some “yeah he’s good,” followed by “well, maybe Jeff McNeil and Starling Marte aren’t completely cooked yet,” and before you know it you’re like watching Jose Siri strike out to turn the lineup over and send Lindor to the plate with the bases empty. Again.
So while I’ve got serious misgivings about what Alonso’s bat is going to look like two or three years from now, I feel pretty confident about what he’s going to do in 2025: Probably hit about 40 home runs, if only because that’s what he does every year. And if he’s hitting behind Lindor and Soto, those 40 dingers are going to translate to a ton of runs batted in.
And with this contract structure, if Alonso declines precipitously in his mid-30s, who cares? The Mets will have either moved on or signed him to a deal that’s more commensurate with those expectations. And if Alonso does keep walking this tightrope, he can sign one lucrative short-term deal after another as long as he continues to hit.
Most important, Alonso stays where he belongs: in the middle of the Mets’ lineup. Over his six-year career, he’s held down the fort through ownership and front office turmoil, a near-total roster turnover, and at least as many embarrassing false starts as playoff appearances. It would’ve been a shame to see him go off to a well-funded semi-retirement elsewhere just as things are about to get good. It’ll be at least one more year before Alonso pulls on a different uniform, which is good, because I never quite got around to imagining it.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com