Pete Alonso’s heroics vs. Tigers give Mets reminder of his uncertain future

Alonso took an 0-1 changeup from Alex Faedo a mere 19 inches from the ground and tattooed it 403 feet over the left-center field wall, tying the game when the Mets had absolutely no momentum. Three batters later, Tyrone Taylor hit a walk-off single and the Mets were in the win column for the first time in 2024.

For at least a few brief moments, Mets fans could let their frustrations and future anxiety melt away and celebrate. But in the front office, it had to serve as at least a brief reminder of Alonso’s impermanence. With each passing day, the lack of an extension for Alonso to remain in New York will loom larger.

What is Alonso worth on the open market?

In short, a lot. The home run on Thursday, in addition to being his 500th career RBI, was a sharp reminder of just how remarkable a hitter Alonso really is. The 6-foot-3, 245 pounder had the raw power to take a pitch well below the zone and hit it out despite having most of his weight out over his front foot. That is the true mark of a power hitter–Alonso’s misses still have the potential to be home runs.

So what does that translate to in a contract? Well, the record for a first baseman in average annual value is Freddie Freeman’s $27 million, while the largest total value was Matt Olson’s $168 million. Alonso is 29, three years younger than Freeman was when he signed and is a more established star than Olson was when he inked his extension with the Atlanta Braves. And Steve Cohen himself has already acknowledged publicly that he expects Alonso to hit free agency.

There’s no guarantee a first baseman will break the $200 million barrier in the near future, but Alonso is the first candidate. It will almost certainly be the initial benchmark Alonso and Scott Boras, who the Polar Bear hired as his agent just this past October, will be looking to clear in their negotiations with the Mets and any other interested parties.

Will Mets pay up to keep their star?

In the Cohen era, much of the messaging around the Mets has been that money is no object. But it gets complicated once we factor in the new collective bargaining agreement, which imposes the strictest penalties ever on teams that spend over the agreed upon salary cap.

The Mets went particularly gung-ho during the first three seasons of Cohen’s tenure, quickly ballooning the payroll to an all-time record of $343 million in 2023. That has put them in a position to pay 120% tax penalty on top of any new salary they add to their payroll, which has now dipped only slightly to $308 million.

Publicly, Cohen has said repeatedly that keeping Pete Alonso is what the team fully intends to do. But will his demands fit within what Cohen ultimately deems an acceptable budget?

From a fan’s perspective, spending all the money the Mets did on Francisco Lindor, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and several others would ring hollow if it kept the team from retaining its most marketable homegrown star since David Wright. But ultimately, no one knows what goes on inside the minds of the billionaires that own baseball teams. With each passing day without an extension, the anxiety Mets fans feel grows just a little bit sharper.

Is trading Alonso a possibility?

This is where it truly matters if New York falls completely out of contention. It has become something of a trend for superstars to get traded before they hit free agency, as the industry has decided losing these players for nothing is too harmful to risk trying to re-sign them if the odds aren’t looking good.

And make no mistake, the Mets are in serious danger of falling out of contention. The pitching rotation is held together with silly string while the offense has been totally lethargic in the season’s opening week. In the uber-competitive National League, bad weeks can turn into bad seasons with no warning.

It would be shocking to see the Mets let the beloved Polar Bear wear another team’s uniform without putting up a fight first. But in 2019, we would have said the same of Mookie Betts and the Red Sox. In 2021, we would have said the same of Juan Soto and the Washington Nationals. These moves are always on the table, whether we like it or not.

Where is all this going?

All we can do is act on the limited information we know–Alonso is a special talent, beloved by Mets fans, on a team that doesn’t look to be headed toward playoff contention. We might like to think he won’t be traded, but we’ll still have to watch the words of Cohen and Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns very closely moving forward.

At the end of the day, though, it’s on Alonso as much as it is on the Mets’ braintrust. A player hitting free agency is a player who has all the power in his hands to decide where he wants to play out the best years of his career and how much his compensation matters in return.

So how badly does Pete Alonso want to be a Met for life? Well, only time will tell, but New York might want to get to work on winning their second and third games in order to convince him he should stay.