Confidence Men

It might stretch credulity if I declared, yup, I knew Pete Alonso was gonna launch a three-run homer to tie the Mets-Marlins game at four in the eighth inning on Wednesday. The Mets had played ragged ball across the first seven and they weren’t too many outs away from a tails-between-their-legs flight home for a Citi Field opener that would necessarily lose a little luster if its purpose was to hail a 2-4 team. Yeah, everybody would stand and cheer the welcome of what Howie Rose unfailingly refers to perennially as the National League season in New York, but discordant notes would infiltrate the runup to introductions and ceremonial first pitches, and who wants that?

Nobody who cares about the Mets. Not you. Not me. Not Pete Alonso, who cares about the Mets as much as anybody, given that he’s carried them intermittently for six going on seven years. In the good Met years, he’s had help. In his less good personal years, he’s insisted, no, he’s got this. The couch isn’t that heavy and the flights of stairs aren’t that steep.

You sure you got this, Pete?

If I wasn’t sure specifically that a tide-turning dinger wasn’t en route, I certainly maintained confidence in Pete as he stood in against Calvin Faucher. Two singles had been bracketed by two outs. Francisco Lindor was on second. Juan Soto was on first. Lindor achieving anything beyond fatherhood in late March and early April is already a victory. Soto’s contribution was a tapper toward first that became a fielder’s choice that nailed Luis Torrens trying to come home from third. Not the worst intermediate outcome, for if Torrens hadn’t dared to attempt to score, you have him on third and Francisco on second, and an open base to put Pete possibly. I don’t know Clayton McCullough’s managerial tendencies yet, even if the rookie skipper already wears that familiar “I’ve been managing the Marlins too long” look every time an SNY camera spots him.

Pete is up, and Pete is working Faucher, and it’s not unlike two nights earlier when the Miami pitcher is Cal Quantrill. The bases were loaded then, one of them also occupied by Soto. Soto, even when he’s not slugging, is getting on base. What few big innings the Mets have cobbled together seem to feature Juan somewhere. The result Monday was Pete’s grand slam, which loosened up the drumtight Met offense once and for all…or so we thought Soon, most Met bats went back into storage. From the seventh inning in the first game of the Marlin series through the seventh inning of third and final game, nineteen innings in all, the Mets had scored three runs. The Marlins weren’t making them look bad. They were doing it to themselves.

But Pete is still up in the eighth on Wednesday. He’d driven in one of the Mets’ three runs from their dry period, way back in the first inning on a double that brought home Soto. The A&S Boys doing their thing, stocking and unstocking bases. High-end retailing has never been so luxurious. Yet a second Alonso double, of the leadoff variety, went to waste in the fourth. By then, the Fish led, 2-1, Clay Holmes had been little more than adequate, and our fielding was showing itself allergic to smoothness. It was easier to imagine the Mets going 2-4 on their first road trip than deciding another Arctic blast was about to descend on South Florida.

Still, I felt good about Alonso as his at-bat versus Faucher preceded. It was a long one. How long is a long at-bat? It should have multiple balls. It should have multiple fouls. It should have a batter who’s done this before. Pete did this on Monday, turning Quantrill’s seventh pitch into his four-run four-bagger. You might remember Pete doing something similar one evening last October versus Devin Williams, then of the Brewers. The process yielded a three-run homer and effectively clinched a postseason series. He needed five pitches that night. Funny, it seemed like more.

The point is that when Pete Alonso gets a count going deep, the count goes in his favor. Other hitters, too, but this is Pete we’re talking about. Anticipation builds around Alonso. He’s been known to anticipate too much from himself and not let the count (let alone the drama) build. Yet you are so taken by the examples that counter that tendency that sometimes you will yourself to expect exceedingly positive resolution.

Five pitches in Milwaukee. Seven pitches on Monday. Wednesday, the balls and the fouls got Pete to a ninth pitch. That was the one that flew out of whatitsName Park to tie the game, 4-4. The Mets were no longer sleepwalking their way to Flushing. The tie signaled a win was at hand. It took eleven innings. It required seven of the eight relief pitchers Carlos Mendoza employs. It especially required the tagging and throwing wizardry of Torrens, who backed up Alonso’s raucous offense with no-joke defense. It ended with a 6-5 Mets victory and a respectable enough 3-3 start to the season (at .500, tails may be removed from between legs and move freely about the cabin). The last time the Mets won a 6-5 decision, it was the end of last June’s trip to London, highlighted by Luis behind the plate stepping on the dish with the bases loaded and then throwing to Alonso for one of the damnedest double plays anybody had ever seen, especially directly prior to a flight home. Back in the present, I had a feeling Luis (who himself was on in relief of Hayden Senger) would come through, too. One of his tags required replay review. “They’re gonna overturn the safe call,” I thought, and they did, much as “he’s gonna come through here” rang true as Pete took Faucher deep in the count and deeper over the center field wall.

A little Pete, a little Luis, a little confidence. Welcome home, men. No notes needed.