The long, cold winter brightened and warmed with the word Wednesday night that a Polar Bear will continue to prowl among us for the foreseeable future, which is to say one, maybe two years. Foreseeable may be a stretch. You live in the world today. You’ve ascertained that nobody can see very far into the future. The future is now. Now we know we have Pete Alonso [1] for 2025.
Pete and the Mets are together again without ever having left one another, which is the way it should be. The contract that makes Alonso a Met for sure in ’25 and at his discretion in ’26 will give him lots of money [2], if not as much money as he would have liked when his free agency commenced. Not as many years, either, but he should consider the savings inherent in staying put. For example, he doesn’t have to invest in a new Hagstrom street atlas to cobble a route to a strange ballpark in a different town. Pete knows the way to Flushing Bay.
[3]Does Pete know the way to Flushing Bay? Apparently so!
It’s a great Met move in the short term. The club brought in Juan Soto, which looms as all upside (for this decade, at least), just not as sky high as it could have been until one big question mark was eliminated from the penciling in of lineups. We had Juan. We had Francisco. We had Mark and Brandon and…uh, back up. Weren’t we missing somebody? We were. We won’t miss him anymore.
The Mets’ first baseman remains the Mets’ first baseman. Pete Alonso has filled that position for so long, it might not be easily recalled who last started at first base for the home team before Pete showed up at Citi in 2019. It was Jay Bruce, Closing Day 2018. Jay’s been retired a while. Messing around with Alonso alternatives, even if they distilled down to a relocated Mark Vientos, was going to be a chore. Vientos at first meant “who?” at third. Abbott & Costello didn’t have an obvious answer there, either.
[4]The A&S Boys can start shopping for RBIs ASAP.
Instead, we have the A&S Boys, Alonso & Soto, filling the middle of the lineup and their shopping bags with RBIs. We have Lindor and Nimmo, as ever, along with young yet continually maturing Vientos and Alvarez. An array of other bats and gloves will be sorted. Pitchers will pitch. There’s never enough pitching, but that’s what the President of Baseball Operations is for. David Stearns is always seeking and finding help. He helped himself, with the support of Steve Cohen, to slugging first baseman Pete Alonso, he of the 226 Met homers and the ability to hit at least 27 more before he has the opportunity to opt out. That would give the Polar Bear 253 and the franchise record. Of course I won’t want him to take his record and tour the open market anew next winter, but that’s next winter. There’s a Spring directly ahead. There’s a last winter detail taken care of. Are we sure the weather’s that frigid in New York today?