Mets, Pete Alonso Come to Their Senses, Get Back Together
Pete Alonso is going back to the Mets. It always felt like the most likely outcome, and to be honest, it would’ve been super weird to see him in any other uniform. Alonso has never been the best player on the Mets, but he does the coolest and most valuable thing you can do on a baseball diamond — hit home runs — with great frequency. That, and an affable attitude that’s endeared him to the fans, has made him an institution in Queens.
Unfortunately, there was something of a disagreement over what all those contributions were worth. Alonso returns to his team of origin on a front-loaded two-year, $54 million contract that features an opt-out. If Alonso does what he’s done his whole career, he can test free agency again next winter, having pocketed $30 million. That’s a handsome one-year salary for any player, but far, far short of Alonso’s expectations.
According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, the Mets offered Alonso a seven-year, $158 million contract extension in the summer of 2023; this contract would’ve bought out Alonso’s last arbitration year and six seasons of free agency. The Polar Bear turned that down, reportedly in pursuit of a contract worth $200 million or more.
That was never going to happen. Since the mooted seven-year extension, both Alonso and the Mets have swapped out negotiators; Alonso signed with Scott Boras, while the Mets replaced Billy Eppler with David Stearns.
That’s significant. Last offseason, Boras had what might’ve been the first genuinely bad winter of his career. His big-ticket clients — Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, and Matt Chapman — were left without a seat into March, and all signed contracts with either a player option or an opt-out after the first season.
Those three players illustrate why Alonso’s contract structure works. Chapman and Snell performed well, and by year’s end, both had signed long-term deals worth well over $100 million. Montgomery was terrible, so bad he got called out in public by Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick. But because of the safety net his contract afforded him, Montgomery was able to exercise a player option and pocket $22.5 million more of Kendrick’s money.
I’m sure Montgomery would rather have had $100 million and a normal 2024 spring training, but it could’ve been worse. This being the week between the Grammys and the Super Bowl, I instinctively looked over my shoulder after I typed, “called out in public by Kendrick.”
And Boras needed to have that club in his bag. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago, Alonso would’ve gotten the contract he was looking for, but not now. Not even from the Mets. Cohen might count his wealth in the tens of billions of dollars, but you don’t amass a civilization-destroying level of wealth through wanton largesse. And Stearns developed his reputation as one of the sharpest front office operators out there by building winning teams in Milwaukee, despite not having two pennies to rub together. He knows better than most that a seven-year contract for Alonso would have aged quite poorly.
I said earlier that Alonso does the coolest, most valuable thing in baseball as often as anyone. Unfortunately, he does little else.
Alonso is a right-handed hitting, right-handed throwing first baseman. That’s already a rough profile, though not an insurmountable one. Paul Goldschmidt won an MVP in his age-34 season. Christian Walker, nearly four years Alonso’s senior, signed a three-year, $60 million contract with an Astros team that’s getting increasingly tightfisted. But Walker is the best defensive first baseman in the league. Alonso fields his position in a manner that leaves no doubt as to why his nickname has “bear” in it.
Goldschmidt routinely posted batting averages around .300 with walk rates in the mid-teens. Alonso will take a walk, but not to the same extent. And his other offensive skills are trending in the wrong direction. The big Floridian hit .271/.352/.518 with 40 home runs in 2022. Over the two seasons that followed, the headline numbers stayed the same — an average of 40 home runs and 158 games played — but his batting line dropped to .229/.324/.480.
One genuinely cool thing about the younger Alonso was his ability hit for huge in-game power while not striking out that much. But even that skill is in the process of deserting him.
Alonso is still mighty strong — I’d back him to out-squat anyone else on Boras Corp’s client roster. But bat speed usually only goes in one direction after age 30 for guys like this. Already, we’ve seen Alonso drop from a 140 wRC+ guy to a 120 wRC+ guy over the past three seasons. Small wonder that when the Mets said, “No, thank you,” to a long-term contract, Alonso couldn’t find a taker anywhere else in the league.
But on a two-year deal? Or, in all likelihood, an extremely expensive one-year deal? Hell yeah.
If we’re looking more than a couple years into the future, Alonso is probably going to be a DH, not a first baseman, with a bat that doesn’t quite merit the distinction. No longer a poor man’s Goldschmidt, Alonso is more like a rich man’s Rhys Hoskins. And I don’t know if you heard about this, but Stearns, Cohen, and Boras got together in December to put a different defensive nonentity in the middle of the Mets’ lineup through the 2039 season. That’s not even a real year.
But for now, Juan Soto can play right field just fine. As for the Mets’ lineup, it starts with two MVP-type players — Soto and Francisco Lindor — and declines rapidly after that. There’s some “yeah he’s good,” followed by “well, maybe Jeff McNeil and Starling Marte aren’t completely cooked yet,” and before you know it you’re like watching Jose Siri strike out to turn the lineup over and send Lindor to the plate with the bases empty. Again.
So while I’ve got serious misgivings about what Alonso’s bat is going to look like two or three years from now, I feel pretty confident about what he’s going to do in 2025: Probably hit about 40 home runs, if only because that’s what he does every year. And if he’s hitting behind Lindor and Soto, those 40 dingers are going to translate to a ton of runs batted in.
And with this contract structure, if Alonso declines precipitously in his mid-30s, who cares? The Mets will have either moved on or signed him to a deal that’s more commensurate with those expectations. And if Alonso does keep walking this tightrope, he can sign one lucrative short-term deal after another as long as he continues to hit.
Most important, Alonso stays where he belongs: in the middle of the Mets’ lineup. Over his six-year career, he’s held down the fort through ownership and front office turmoil, a near-total roster turnover, and at least as many embarrassing false starts as playoff appearances. It would’ve been a shame to see him go off to a well-funded semi-retirement elsewhere just as things are about to get good. It’ll be at least one more year before Alonso pulls on a different uniform, which is good, because I never quite got around to imagining it.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
Mets fans, including this one, are rejoicing: we can finally stop going to MLBTradeRumors.com every two minutes.
The lineup looks much better now. Going to be a dogfight in the NL East.
This is probably the best possible situation for the Mets with Alonso. They don’t really have anyone to replace him in the lineup this year, but there is no long term risk.
There’s a decent chance one of their young guys could handle 3B and hit, but glad that’s plan B now
The Mets you tube account posted game four of last years nlcs so I was enjoying watching that and I was very happy when I got the alert that Pete re-signed from the mlb trade rumors app.
Nlds I mean game four of the nlcs sucked.
Saying the Mets lineup declines rapidly after Soto and Lindor feels like forgetting that Mark Vientos exists. Even if he takes a step back, it’s hardly fair to completely blow off a 135 OPS+ at age 24 as an afterthought.
I imagine that Vientos and Nimmo are part of the “yeah he’s good” guys that weren’t worth mentioning by name.
It really depends which projection system you buy into. ZiPS and Steamer think he’ll be only a slightly worse hitter than Alonso, but THE BAT and PECOTA think he’s only a smidge above league average. In the latter case, that’s a good hitter but a steep drop-off from the heights of Soto and Lindor.
There’s some clear downside there. He hits the ball very hard but he whiffs a ton and chases a good bit.
Plate discipline could be a big problem this year for Vientos. Homers go down when MLB pitchers realize how often a hitter will chase.
I’d be a lot more bearish (no pun intended in an Alonso article), if he didn’t do some of his best hitting against Philly and LA in the playoffs. Those teams have no shortage of quality pitching, and had a year’s worth of scouting on Vientos. Didn’t help them one bit.
He’s always going to strike out, but it’s not like he was Kevin Maas or Shane Spencer, and did all his hitting against fastballs in the first month of his season.
Firstly, suggesting that a 13 game span is more indicative of a player’s potential than an entire season is quite a statement.
Secondly, he went 6 for 27 against the Dodgers, you’re just remembering the big home run in game 2. Outside of that he had a pretty meh series against them at best.
Finally, he’s bottom of the league in Whiff% and Chase%, thinking he won’t improve from that is foolish, but thinking that somehow 13 games supersedes any other indication that he doesn’t strike out a lot is even more foolish.
The projections all bake this information in — and they see Vientos as somewhere in the vicinity of a 116-120 wRC+ guy putting up somewhere between 3-3.5 WAR. As a Mets fan, I’d happily take that — that’s a very good young player. Is there more downside risk bc of the Ks? Sure. But by that logic there’s also more upside potential bc of the power.
The person you’re responding to didn’t suggest that that 13 games is MORE indicative of Vientos true talent, but rather that he’d be more bearish on the league adjusting to him and him comletely cratering if he hadn’t put up an excellent line in the postseason. This seems like a pretty reasonable take to me. The projection systems see Vientos as a very good (though not elite) hitter going forward, and that seems right to me.
Thank you, yes. I thought it was pretty obvious that I was saying.
Vientos had a great season even with the strikeouts and chase issues. The fact that he added another 5 HR in 13 playoff games speaks more to the fact that it wasn’t some sort of Kevin Maas situation, as I mentioned.
aren’t you using the same argument you’re arguing against when say 6 for 27?
I honestly didn’t grok how long he kept that performance up!
For this signing, I give the Mets an A, Scott Boras a B-, and Pete Alonso a big fat F.
Turning down that extension was a huge own-goal. As far as we know, he had no market at all this offseason, only teams circling to see if he was desperate enough to take a deal like this one.
I do wonder what he could have gotten if he had just said “give me your six year deals!” And just taken the highest one. Of course nobody actually wanted him on that length but that’s because nobody generally signs for 6 years at close to the AAV he wanted.
Maybe $90M? $100M? I think the Mets were the most motivated team to sign him and it seemed that $71M was the most they were willing to spend over that time frame. Can someone work backwards to figure out what $71M in net present value would be over six years?
I’m assuming the Mets would be willing to give him more money over four years, but not that much more; same with five and six. I think that by year 4, teams are projecting that he’s going to be a zero.
I imagine the Mets would have been fine with tacking 4 years and 60 million on to the back of what he did sign for, which would be 6/$114. Especially since that lowers the cap hit per year to 19 million.
So, obviously right now the rejection of the extension offer was a bad idea. He’s guaranteed himself $75m over three years instead of $158m over seven. That’s $83m lost, but if mitigation were paramount, you’re saying it could have been only $23m lost (or ~$42m if we use ST’s number). But he does still have opportunity to make up a large chunk of that, though it would take a miracle for his decision to be a good one, but it could end up being only a moderate disaster, to the extent you can ever call making over $100m in a career of baseball a disaster.
Cohen’s smart enough to prioritize cash over cap hit, though – he’s not Hal Steinbrenner.
And Stearns?
I give Boras an F minus. The Mets, Steve Cohen to be precise, clearly got fed up with Boras’s shenanigans and almost drove the very good and extremely popular Pete Alonso out of town which would have been a terrible outcome for all concerned.
I would give the F to Pete’s pre-Boras agent, but yeah.
I have a hard time understanding why Alonso couldn’t see that the market for right-right 1st baseman was always going to be limited and didn’t jump on that 7 for $158M that was offered in 2023. He is going to have to be very fortunate to ever reach that figure the way his career is headed. It wasn’t his agent that had the final say.
I sincerely love Pete Alonso, but he is not the first guy I would ask to do stuff like forecasting a market and making a rational investing choice based on that forecast. He is not the thousandth guy I would ask to do that. He is a lovable big dumb meathead who swings a big stick. Figuring this out was his agent’s job.
Alonso moved from his prior agent to Boras within a few months of that 2023 extension offer. The 7/$158 extension offer was reported mid-season, and Alonso moved to Boras immediately after the 2023 season.
We don’t know the behind closed door conversations, but it’s very possible that Alonso’s prior agent *did* advise him to take that extension offer. In this speculative scenario, Alonso didn’t like that advice, and so a few months later Alonso moves on to Boras.
We hear all the time about guys betting on themselves. The reality is that is that some of them don’t work out, it’s just inevitable — it’s just how betting works. These guys have huge amounts of self confidence, it’s part of how they succeed. In this case, Pete was undone by it (but he’ll be fine once he gets over the ego bruise of it, he’s already richer than god).
Players move to Boras when they want more money.
I think he saw Cohen’s deep pockets, Judge’s deal, and a bit of delusion crept in.
I think Cohen’s wealth is a big part of it. He sees Cohen throw money at Nimmo/Scherzer/Verlander/Diaz deals, some of which came in above expected market, and thinks that in the end, Cohen will cave in to keep a popular player.
It was nuts in hindsight, and a pretty aggressive choice at the time. In very, very weak defense of his decision, many huge contracts were signed in 2022 and 2023, including some cuckoo brained ones like the Boegarts deal. It’s when the economy was riding high and everyone was making money. It seems clear Alonso and/or his agent saw some of those deals, and figured something better was coming.
Alonso isn’t Bogaerts, though.
But that idiotic Story signing was something to dream on 😂
Hoo boy, yeah 6/140. And Alonso was coming off a huge 2022.
When he saw Story’s contract he had to think “yeah, I can get more”.
Hard to parse out Boras and Alonso, but I think I agree.
This has been my favorite topic during this off-season and I have been literally screaming that Pete Alonso and the Mets belong together like a horse and carriage or love and marriage. I am happy that something has been done but I am not happy with the deal at all. I fear that Pete has put himself in tenuous situation. His hope for a long term contract ever being offered to him is going to require him to tear the cover off the ball and, with that said, simply good years. similar to 2024, are not going to be enough. In a very interesting comment on MLB’s top 100 last night Steve Phillips made an impassioned defense of Pete focusing on his defense. That’s right his defense!. Phillips specifically mentioned Pete’s great skill at scooping which defensive metrics do a terrible job of measuring. When asked to choose between Alonso and Christian Walker, also an excellent player, Phillips said “Pete Alonso, hands down” and co-host Al Leiter agreed. I think Pete has been very poorly served by Boras and I am afraid that my desire to see him play his entire career with the Mets is still in doubt.
From the Mets fan’s perspective, Steve Phillips and Al Leiter are… well, they’re not the guys I’d be listening to about how to build a team. We tried that already.
Me neither I will say Steve Phillips is pretty good on mlb network so there’s that.
I am interested in seeing how the Buster Posey tenure goes for somewhat similar reasons. Chapman and Adames are reasonable, if not great signings, but there’s still time for him to call Brandon Crawford and see if he can play LF, etc.
Or like Al & Peg Bundy.
Loved that show too bad they never got a proper ending.
> [scooping]… which defensive metrics do a terrible job of measuring
Is this true? The work I’ve seen suggests that scoops are basically a product of luck (at the MLB 1B skill level)
That is simply not true. I watch almost every Red Sox game and most Mets games and the difference between Alonso scooping everything and Casas waving his muleta at the ball as it whizzes by him is stark. In 2024 Alonso was #1 with a scooping percentage of 93%. As best I could research the average is 82%. That is very significant!
I am stealing this from an article I found on the net. “He is one of the best just by watching every game. So many throws that would be errors he turns into outs. And the funny part is the out improves the stats ratings for the guys doing the throwing, meanwhile 1B is the ‘least important/hard position’ so it gets very little value in the formulas that valuate a player’s worth.” This quote says, very well, exactly why defensive metrics are very suspect and the metrics for 1st baseman are well past worthless.
What part says why they are suspect and why the metrics are past worthless?
Doesn’t it just say that though there are 2 variables involved in completing a play that the metric captures, the metrics only give credit to one variable, let’s call it variable A? Implying that the other variable – B – can either inflate or deflate the perceived values of variable A, to make A look, in this case, better/worse than it really is?
Or idk.. I’m not really sure I get what the quote is saying here. But it also seems to be pointing out anecdotal data, so at least at first glance, IMO, the quote doesn’t say anything very well about defensive metrics for 1B, or defensive metrics in general. But maybe I’m missing it.
There is information on the net. I found 2024 stats by searching Google for First base scooping stats.
Lichtman did an analysis of this topic in 2009, and he concluded there’s probably about a 4-6 runs per year difference between the receiving ability (includings scoops) of the best and worst 1B in MLB. That range of difference indicates that ~25% the value of 1B defense is in receiving ability.
In terms of WAR, that’s a difference of ~0.5 WAR per season between the very top and very bottom scooping ability 1B.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/first-basemen-scoops/
Lichtman’s analysis is rather dated – 2009 – in defensive analytics terms. So maybe there’s newer work with a different conclusion, but I didn’t readily find it.
If you show me an established first baseman, I’ll show you an fanbase that is convinced he is the best in the business at scooping throws. Chip Caray went from Freeman to Olson to Goldschmidt stating with conviction that each was the “best in the business.”
I’m sure there are guys that are better than others; I don’t trust fans or pundits to accurately know who they are.
Back in the 90s the Phillies broadcasters used to say that Rico Brogna (-6 lifetime dWAR) saved them 100-150 runs per year with his scoops.
I said to a friend one time that he maybe saved them 100-150 runs over them not having a first baseman at all, which he still laughs about.
Does Tango still do the Fan Fielding scout?
FWIW, I would say Pete is in fact a very good “scooper” and this has been to the benefit of Lindor and the assortment of 3Bs the Mets have run out over the years.
However, he’s not very good at coming off the bag and is approximately as good at stretching as you would expect someone with his body type to be. Essentially, his receiving is in line with what the metrics say about his actual defense – he can handle what is right at him and otherwise it’s pretty ugly.
And he throws the ball almost as badly as late career Chuck Knoblauch.
It was very easy to find by searching Google for First baseman scooping stats. There were several articles that show Alonso was #1.
The analysis is dated, but if it’s solid you’d expect scoops to be even less valuable with the dearth of batted balls.
We don’t know for certain that the Mets offered Alonso the Bellinger deal, because all we know about the number of opt outs is that it had at
least one. But this to me looks much less player friendly than the Bellinger deal. Having a good walk year is so important with the recency bias front offices display. Alonso gets more money up front but only getting to pick your walk year once is certainly not as good as getting two options.
I guess that means he is planning on opting out then, barring catastrophic injury?
I find it fascinating that Alonso is projected by Steamer for 2.3 WAR/600 PA and Baty is projected for 2.2 WAR/600 PA. I’m guessing the average Mets fan would project a slightly larger gap.
As a Mets fan, I would take the under on Baty. He didn’t show much of anything at the ML level to believe he’s even a 2 win player…
At this point, should they sell low to a team like the White Sox in case Baty’s value deteriorates even further? He’s not really playable right now on a contender, but maybe a rebuilding team sees him as flier-worthy as a change-of-scenery candidate.
What’s the point of selling low? Just to clear a 40 man spot?
At a certain point if you’re not going to play a guy, his value will never go any higher than the present day if you are planning on selling.
This. You either play him or trade him. There’s no point keeping him in the minors.
The only point to playing him in the minors now would be to give him more run time at 2B, which would give him a fairly interesting angle as a utility player with some left-handed pop.
Is that more valuable to the Mets than whatever they could get for him in a trade right now? Perhaps, their 2B future options are wide but not necessarily tall.
And some guys just need a fresh start elsewhere.
And this is NY, after all.
Plus, some teams move players they have limited use for just to let them find a better fit, even if the return is low.
I’d think that “certain point” comes either when he’s out of options, or they get an offer they like. Vientos breaks his hand in April and then what? Acuna and his sub 650 ops at AAA? Mauricio after having only a month or two of baseball activities post surgery? Depth is important and Baty is depth that can be stashed in the minors.
In fairness to Mets fans, this Steamer projection for Baty includes him being a 101 wRC+ hitter.
Baty has 600 total MLB PA’s, with career 72 wRC+. Baty was better in 2024 (83 wRC+ in 171 PA’s), but still hit far below his 2025 Steamer projection.
I get that AAA stats also matter for projections, and Baty is still young enough (25) that maybe he’ll show something more at the MLB level.
Baumann wrote an article last month pointing out just how underwhelming Baty’s underlying MLB hitting metrics are – https://blogs.fangraphs.com/what-happened-to-brett-baty-man/
There is literally nothing that Baty has done at the big league level that would give me confidence in a 2 WAR season for him. It’s not like he’s just an adjustment or two away – he literally hasn’t done anything well. I am rooting for him to succeed, but I think the only way that happens is on a different team that can give him a long rope and see if he works it out.
It’s probably fair to believe Mets fans are low on Baty’s offense but I’m not sure it’s fair to believe Baty is a positive defensive 3B based on the sliver of a season he played last year. He was bad prior to that, doesnt seem overly athletic and didnt have great scout write ups as a prospect
Certainly, he makes sense as a change of scenery guy but I also think he’s fine as a reserve. He’s the first callup if any of their corners or Winker get injured, he’ll have an opportunity
Mets are paying a lot for certainty, but as you noted it’s not like Alonso is filling a total void. Would be fascinating if the Mets trade Baty and he gets 450 PA in the majors to see.
Why was my post marked as spam? Anyway I’ll repost Very happy Pete’s back and glad it is on a short term deal I wouldn’t have gone beyond 3-4 years as he’s shown signs of declining the previous few years. He made a terrible mistake turning down the sentimental seven year deal Eppler and Cohen offered him a contract that Stearns would never offer him. There are major league players that bet on themselves and it pays off big time like Soto when he turned down the huge Nats offer in 2022, but it didn’t work for Pete obviously. Hopefully something clicked in the playoffs and he starts hitting the ball in the air more again and he has a big year and helps the Mets win it all. Having him back is huge allowing them to give Mauricio time in Syracuse after he missed a year.
The big loser in this all is Baty, who doesn’t have a spot in the majors and heads back to Syracuse to get more work at second base(he played around thirty games there in Syracuse last year and maybe some run in the OF? I could also see him being traded for a fellow post hype former top prospect in a challenge trade I don’t have anyone in mind honestly.
Boras can take a tiny bit of something getting Pete 30 mil in his first year, which is more than Freeman makes and one less mil than Miggy got but Boras misread the market yet again.
The top five in the lineup of Lindor/Soto/Alonso/Vientos/Nimmo is excellent and if Winker can get some more slug in his game and Alvarez breaks out it is a top tier lineup.
You really think this is going to happen? I have to imagine that Boras’s target is now to find him a longer-term contract, say 4+ years for an AAV in the teens/twenties, after whichever of the 2025/26 seasons serves as the better dinger-driven launching pad for it. Everyone can see the writing on the wall about Pete’s aging curve. I’m honestly a bit pessimistic about him remaining with the Mets past the term of this deal unless his performance craters, because I think Stearns isn’t going to be the guy to sign him to the next deal — which is now going to be the bad one.
Seeing a lot of comments that say this is Boras’s fault. I think that the $71M deal from the Mets was probably better than the one that ultimately got negotiated, so maybe you can blame him for that. But beyond that, I’m not seeing it.
There are cases (often Boras) when the agent comes in with a number that is too high and teams disengage and don’t want to bid on a free agent. And maybe that happened here, but if so it’s hard to see how it changed his market. The baseline is a three year, $71M deal, and if there were teams who wanted to give him a $100M+ deal for four years (or more), I think they would have done it in the last month when most of the other free agents had signed.
Look at the teams that signed similar players that also had a QO. The Blue Jays needed an outfielder and a left-handed bat. The Dodgers needed an outfielder, and he got a similar deal to Alonso. The Astros were very specifically targeting Christian Walker, who also had a better walk year than Alonso, has a better projection, and got a worse deal than the Mets’ 3 year offer to Alonso. What this says to me is that this is where the market settled on guys like this. And it’s not like most of the other teams looking at Bregman have openings at 1B and DH.
What would someone expect Boras to do in this situation? He spent the last month working overtime trying to convince the Mets that Alonso had offers somewhere else. You know he called all the direct lines for the owners. But those didn’t go anywhere, and that is almost certainly because the market wasn’t there.
And for all the nonsense with Bregman and the Astros too, it seems like that offer is still on the table for now. The only real error made by Alonso’s team was turning down that previous extension offer, and that was when he had different representation.
I am often critical of Boras’s negotiating tactics and think he’s served some of his clients poorly recently (eg Montgomery). But I also see basically nothing to criticize him for here. He was handed a bad hand by Pete’s prior representation and played it about as well as anyone could.
I see it exactly the opposite way. Apex Baseball got him a 7/158 offer which is a great contract for a right-right 1st baseman. Goldschmidt, a better player, got 5/130 at the age of 32 as a right-right 1st baseman but I guess the ugly memories of how the Cabrera and Pujols fiascos are stuck in GM’s minds. It was Alonso, not the agent, that turned the deal down. I have been surprised throughout this off-season that the industry has placed such a low value on him especially when I see aging and/or mediocre starters getting huge deals just as starting pitchers are throwing far fewer innings.
You may indeed be right, who knows. I have definitely discounted this possibility. I do see it as his agent’s job, at that point, to basically slap him in the face, say “you think you’re ever getting this offer again? SIGN THE DAMN CONTRACT,” and do everything short of physically forcing him to sign on the dotted line — but for all I know they did that, and he fired them.
Agents are only supposed to advise you on what to do, and negotiate deals on your behalf. They work FOR you, not the other way around.
Why else would he fire them? For reasons that seem foolish now he didn’t recognize that Apex Baseball actually did a very good job in getting him a long term contract for $158M.
Agreed, it’s semantics.
In my life I’ve had a number of advisers and 90% of the time I simply defer to their expertise. If my agent says that I can get a much better deal, I’m going to turn down the offer.
I wonder if Pete just didn’t want to be tied down for 7 more years at the time of the extension offer. Not entirely sure why he’d do that other than he simply wants the freedom to choose where he gets to play every couple years or so. This time around the few other good teams that entered this winter without 1B/DH locked in either had other plans that worked out quickly, or just couldn’t (wouldn’t) spend the money to get him.
I can’t see that at all. Living in the northeast with full access to all the New York media it is easy to feel the vibes and every indication has been that he loves New York and wants to be a Met. He was recently rated the #9 favorite Mets player of all time ahead of Koosman, LIndor, Franco, Orosco and many others. Everything I thought I knew makes me admit to being stunned that he passed on the offer that he got in 2023. It seemed to fit his situation perfectly. If he thought an aging right-right 1st baseman was going to get a much larger offer 2 years later he is either dumb as a stump or had an inflated idea of what his 2024 season was going to produce.
Either his prior representation or by Alonso himself. It’s entirely possible that the agent recommended Alonso take it, Alonso disagreed, and that’s why he decided to switch to a different representative.
I also would ding Boras if he recommended the $54M deal over the $71M one, but I can’t say for certain that the latter one was better.
To me they all stink to high heaven.
I would say from an AAV standpoint and ignoring the previous extension offer, this contract for 2025 Pete Alonso is a win for him and Boras. If he was looking for something higher than $30 million a year, he needs to take a look in the mirror and realize that’s not how much value he brings.
I continue to think that he has serious untapped potential. 2023 he was secretly fine: he hit 46 home runs and like half his line drives found gloves somehow. Last year was bad but possibly because he was working on improving his approach at the plate and it took some time for things to click?
Mostly I just felt like he was overswinging. If you watch the home run off Williams, it’s such a soft, easy stroke. He just doesn’t need to swing any harder than that, but he doesn’t always seem to realize that?
If only the price of eggs and bacon were coming down ad quickly as the price for veteran 1B.
They seem to do a better job of keeping veteran first basemen healthy than livestock, so that matters. The analogy is cleaner for starting pitching.
Admittedly a Mets fan deep cut, but if we’re talking about the 1B supply being affected by weird zoonotic disease: Ike Davis’s career was effectively ended by valley fever.
The huge hitch in his swing didn’t help either
I’m sure they’ll come down as the competition decreases and the price of energy (and new trucks!) increases!
The fundamental weakness in Pete’s argument to teams was the drop in his performance in ’23 and ’24 versus ’21 and ’22. Pete put up a 141 wRC+ and 3.8 fWAR in ’22. Last year, it was 122 and 2.1. That is a huge dip, and it was sustained over two seasons. Even though it still would have been too long a contract, 6 years and $137 million (the value of Eppler’s rejected offer, minus the arb year) made a lot more sense for a player with Alonso’s ’22 numbers.
That a player with Pete’s profile will suffer early age-related decline is a given. The key question is from what starting point that decline commences. If Pete had put up a 140 wRC+ in 2024, projections for his next five seasons would have been much rosier. He still would never have gotten a $200 million contract, but 5/125 would have been plausible.
Pete’s problem is not primarily that he rejected Eppler’s offer. It’s that after saying no to that contract, he played himself into a smaller one.
I am glad he’s back, though (and glad it’s not for too long). Hopefully, we will see something closer to ’22 Pete in ’25.
I always hear that the right handed first baseman is such a bad profile but.. why? Is it because the rest of the infield has to be right handed, so you usually want a left handed first baseman to balance a lineup out? Even then, who cares (especially once a player is established in MLB) whether a first baseman fields right handed or left handed?
It is typically better to have a left-handed first baseman to balance the lineup, but in this case it’s not about the handedness, it’s about athleticism. Athletic guys without long speed who throw right handed play third base, or maybe even second base. So if you’re a right handed first baseman, it means your overall athleticism is suspect.
(You can find cases where this isn’t true if you look for them. Paul Goldschmidt stole 30 bases one year. Christian Walker seems decently athletic too)
This doesn’t hold for left handed first baseman, at least not in all cases. Athletic guys without long speed who throw left handed play first base. Unfortunately for the utility of this decision rule, non-athletic guys who are left handed also play first base.
I suppose it’s a little more tactful than saying “this guy’s nickname is literally Polar Bear, how do you think his athleticism is?”
Walker seems like a guy who has the agility and hands to handle at least third, but just not the arm. His fielding chops also give him a higher floor than Alonso.
Roger. But in this particular instance, we know who Pete is – he’s slow as shit and has no fielding range (he does save a lot of throwing errors though, not sure if that gets picked up in the fielding stats as much as it could). The fact that he’s right handed doesn’t make that better or worse.
People also take the aging curve too dogmatically. Obviously on average, guys tend to diminish when they get to Pete’s age and older, but an average is just an average. There are scores of exceptions, and Pete wouldn’t be at all an outlier if he keeps mashing well into his mid-30s.
it’s the only infield position you can play a lefty at. if you wanna stack lefty bats in your lineup, you have to utilize 1b.
another small benefit, when fielding a lefty gets to see plays develop in the infield as he receives the throw. a right hander is busy looking at right field. that can allow for more seamless decision making if a throw needs to be made after the putout. might only matter a few times per season, but it’s worth something.
The people talking about athleticism are getting most of the way there, a R/R 1B means he’s not athletic enough to play another position and likely brings little value outside his bat.
Which also means his bat has to be truly special because RHH 1Bs are going to be at a platoon disadvantage most of the time. An unathletic LHH 1B has a built in advantage given that most MLB pitchers are RHPs.
A short-side platoon 1B who can’t handle a different position is pretty much non-existent in the MLB.
What I had learned along the way (take this for what it’s worth)…
A 1B plays close to the line, so the majority of the balls they have to field are to their right. A RH 1B has to reach his glove across his body for the majority of those plays, and in turn their expected to conversion rate is lower than the LH 1B who just has to lift his right arm.
The other part is that they receive throws with their back towards the runner barreling down on them, and requires a bit of blind faith to make a play without getting steam-rolled. I’m not sure I buy into that point much, but again it’s one of those tidbits I picked up on the topic so I’m sharing it.
I guess the Mets “came to their senses” but finally dropping their offer low enough where it’s a good deal for them.
Not a Met fan so I’m indifferent as to both sides. Alonso didn’t read the room and it cost him dearly. C’est la vie. But the line”civilization destroying level of wealth” read like something out of CHE!-graphs. What Marxist drivel
He wrote a great piece on Baty a few weeks ago but otherwise let’s just say he’s not one of my favorites.
Sure, yeah, totally fantastical concept, and not happening at this moment. You folks love talking about Marxism and then you don’t even follow current events.