In the interview room, Pete Alonso was searching for the right word to sum up what had to be the most heartwarming day of his career, for so many reasons.
After all, no matter what he says publicly, there were surely times last winter when the slugger believed he wasn’t coming back to the Mets, given the lack of traction in contract negotiations.
Yet here was Alonso at the home opener, soaking in all the love the Citi Field fans could heap upon him after his first-inning home run that set the tone for a 5-0 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, eventually taking a curtain call when the cheering wouldn’t end.
So what was the right word to describe such a memorable day?
Alonso went with “picturesque” a couple of times, speaking to the feel of a convincing win on a day the Mets dodged threatening skies and got temperatures warm enough for short sleeves.
Finally, when asked about his own personal feelings, Alonso tried again.
“It was very storybook-like,” he said with a smile.
Yep, that works.
Maybe there are other emotions Alonso would rather not speak to as well, of course. It’s only natural for him to have a chip on his shoulder and a determination to prove he deserved the long-term contract the Mets wouldn’t give him.
But to his credit, he hasn’t offered so much as a hint in that direction from the day in February that he re-signed for the two-year, $54 million deal that includes an opt-out after 2025.
Instead, he has shown up with a smile and gone to work, so far at least debunking any notion that he is in decline as a hitter after his numbers had fallen off the last two seasons.
“He’s locked in,” was the way Carlos Mendoza put it after Friday’s win. “When he’s not chasing, when he’s going to the opposite field, he’s really, really good.”
More than that, Alonso has been a difference-maker, something he wasn’t in 2024, at least until the postseason.
Already this season, he has hit three game-changing home runs, all of them to center or right-center, to the point Mendoza was making, which indicates he is not pressing and overswinging, which seemed to be the case last year.
All in all, after seven games, Alonso is hitting .292 with five extra-base hits, 10 RBI and a .750 slugging percentage. On Wednesday he hit three balls at 113 mph or higher off the bat, which is rarefied air for exit velocity.
Even more impressive, after his first two at-bats on Friday, including his home run and then a rocket ground ball to third, Alonso had hit the ball at 101 mph or harder in six straight at-bats over two games.
Yet, to fully appreciate how hot Alonso is at the moment, you had to see just how he hit that first-inning home run on Friday. Facing an elite starter in Kevin Gausman, whose nasty splitter puts hitters in protect mode with two strikes, Alonso fell behind 1-2, fouled off an inside fastball, and then flicked his bat at a 95-mph heater below the knees on the outside corner.
And it went 377 feet into the wind over the right-field fence.
According to Inside Edge, a statistical website, it was only the fourth time in his career that Alonso had hit a home run with two strikes on a pitch outside the strike zone.
That’s locked in, all right.
Yet long-time teammate Brandon Nimmo insisted he wasn’t surprised.
“That’s very much Pete,” Nimmo said. “He finds the barrel and it can leave any ballpark.”
However, scouts will tell you it wasn’t happening as much as usual last season. Heck, your own eyes told you that. He was hitting mistake pitches and not ...
