PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Pete Alonso, with a winter of discord behind him, tried to turn the page.
On Monday, the slugging first baseman spoke to reporters for the first time since reupping with the Mets on a two-year, $54 million pact that features an opt-out after 2025. That was, quite simply, not the contract Alonso and his agent, Scott Boras, were seeking when the offseason began. But a satisfactory long-term deal never materialized, which ultimately led Alonso back to the only club he has ever known.
“For me, this was it,” the gleeful Floridian insisted Monday. “I’m just really happy to be back.”
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Alonso’s upbeat demeanor and positive comments, while genuine — he referred to the organization as “home” multiple times in his media conference — don’t tell the complete story of his winter. This is more than a simple, feel-good reunion. As the offseason crawled along with Alonso lingering on the market, negotiations between his team and the Mets eventually developed a contentious edge, bleeding into the public eye. At a fan event in January, Mets owner Steve Cohen described his conversations with Boras and Alonso as “exhausting.”
For Alonso, it’s impossible to describe his first free-agent foray as anything other than a disappointment, at least financially. During the summer of 2023, Alonso declined a seven-year, $158 million extension offer from the Mets. That offseason, he switched agencies, hoping that Boras, the game’s most notorious agent, would deliver the goods after 2024. Freddie Freeman’s six-year, $162 contract seemed to be the goal.
Then Alonso posted the most underwhelming statistical campaign of his career, one that he admitted made things difficult for him on the open market.
“I couldn’t expect something incredibly mega-long because I didn’t have my best year,” he said when asked if he was surprised by how the market valued him. “In ‘23, I didn’t really have my best year, either. The two years stacked up, [I] didn’t really play to my potential.”
Lackluster 2024 aside, Alonso remains one of the game’s premier power threats. His 226 homers since his debut in 2019 rank second behind only Aaron Judge. His 846 games played also ranks second, behind only Marcus Semien. Few hitters in the game offer that level of impact and durability. And while Alonso’s profile has warts — he’s a 30-year-old, plodding, right-handed-hitting first baseman — the…