Peter, Out: Orioles Swipe Alonso From Mets

After a somnambulant first day of the Winter Meetings, one of the buzzier rumors involved free agent first baseman Pete Alonso getting in his car, driving up I-4 from his home in Tampa to Orlando, and pitching himself in person to the Red Sox and Orioles.

Apparently, those meetings went well. The drive from New York to Baltimore mostly takes place on expensive toll roads, but Alonso now has an extra $155 million to put on his EZ Pass account. Big Pete, the Polar Bear, the face of the Mets’ franchise, is bound for Baltimore on a five-year contract.

It’s not shocking in the slightest that Alonso signed soon after Kyle Schwarber re-upped with the Phillies. Schwarber’s deal set the market for the avuncular power-over-all-else NL East DH-type guy. And it also took the Phillies (as well as the Reds and Pirates, who were evidently interested in Schwarber and only Schwarber) out of the market for a middle-of-the-order bat.

The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the Orioles had offered to match Schwarber’s five-year, $150 million deal; at the time, this struck me as a precisely calculated “we tried” effort. Schwarber was unlikely to move all his stuff to take the same money from a worse team, where he isn’t the undisputed clubhouse leader. At the same time, the Orioles’ great sin under Mike Elias has been operating as if it’s more important to be clever than successful; dumping a massive bag of money in the lap of an aging DH — 56-homer season or not — didn’t seem like Elias’ style.

Surprises, it turns out, can be fun.

Alonso isn’t quite in Schwarber’s league as a hitter; after his 53-homer rookie campaign, the former Florida Gator topped out at 46 dingers in 2023. Alonso’s .524 SLG — his highest mark since that rookie year — ranked 12th in the majors, one point ahead of Michael Busch. His career-high 10.4% walk rate, posted in 2019, would’ve been Schwarber’s career low.

But Alonso is roughly two years younger than Schwarber, which is significant when you’re talking about five-year contracts for players in their 30s. And he was absolutely terrific in his walk year.

In 2024, Alonso returned to the Mets on a frontloaded two-year deal with an opt-out, having struck out on his search for a longer-term contract. And he did more than just run it back in 2025; he got more aggressive within the strike zone, shored up his weakness against sliders, posted the best quality-of-contact numbers of his career, and ran a .272 batting average and a 141 wRC+.

The Orioles have had only three offensive seasons that good in the past 20 years: Two by Chris Davis in the 2010s, and one by Gunnar Henderson in 2024.

Alonso is clearly an upgrade at either first base or DH for almost anyone, and the Orioles, who traded Ryan O’Hearn at the deadline, are not one of the exceptions. Combined with the Taylor Ward trade from earlier this offseason, Alonso’s signing brings balance to a Baltimore lineup that was a little lefty-heavy, with Henderson and Jackson Holliday up near the top of the order, and Colton Cowser and Samuel Basallo showing up later on.

And like the Corbin Burnes trade before the 2024 season, this is a sign that Elias and his boss, David Rubenstein, are willing to go outside the homegrown talent pool to find pieces that’ll put Baltimore over the top. Even if they cost a lot.

Because this is a lot of money for Alonso. Ben Clemens had Alonso booked for four years and $120 million; our reader crowdsource estimate averaged out to four years and $107 million. ZiPS was slightly more conservative, suggesting $110 million in total value for a five-year contract.

I’ll come out and just say two things our readers probably already know: First, Alonso is very good now, and will improve the Orioles quite a bit in the short term. And — as weird as this might seem, given how long Baltimore’s been the next hot thing — the Orioles’ window is not going to stay open forever. They only have two more seasons of team control left on Adley Rutschman, and only three more on Gunnar Henderson and Kyle Bradish; that lines up with the remaining years of Alonso’s prime.

Which leads to the second thing you probably already know: Big power hitters like Alonso don’t always age well, and sometimes, when it goes, it goes all at once. Orioles fans, having seen the backend of Davis’ career, know this as well as anyone.

But I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

The Orioles have some work to do; their rotation is pretty weak for a team with championship aspirations, and the AL East is not the kind of division that lends itself to someone backing into first place by going 88-74. This division holds the past two AL pennant winners, the Blue Jays and the Yankees, a Red Sox team that’s rearming for another playoff run, and a Rays team that sometimes comes out of nowhere to win 92 games with a lineup of guys you’ve never heard of. If the Orioles want to contend, they’ll have to be good, not just lucky. Alonso is a good incremental step, but he can’t throw 150 league-average innings.

As simple as the picture is for Alonso’s new team, his old club, the Mets, are in a bit of a pickle.

I’ll start by saying this, as someone who does not need too much provocation to laugh at the Mets. (I’ve watched Mr. Met fall off the stage at the Lumineers concert about 500 times.) But letting Alonso walk is not an “Lol, Mets” moment for me, even one day after Edwin Díaz left for the Dodgers without very much financial provocation.

This is a 31-year-old right-right first baseman — a DH, really — who was going to conflict defensively with Juan Soto sooner rather than later. Just on those grounds, I get a front office not wanting to commit for five years and spend $155 million. Even a front office bankrolled by Steve Cohen.

And as popular as Alonso is, and as many jerseys and bobbleheads as he’s sold over the past seven seasons, his status as a franchise icon should not make him an automatic re-sign. During Alonso’s tenure, the Mets have made the playoffs just twice in seven seasons, advancing past the Division Series only once. In 2025, they ran a $340 million payroll, crapped the bed down the stretch, won just 83 games, and missed the playoffs.

I’m not saying that’s Alonso’s fault. Only that the era of Mets baseball he’s come to define has not been especially successful. Therefore, I wouldn’t move heaven and earth to keep him around on franchise legend grounds.

But here’s the eternal question when a team — especially one with money — lets a key player walk: What are you going to do with the savings?

The example I keep coming back to is the Washington Nationals, who let Bryce Harper walk after the 2018 season, then used the money they freed up to sign Patrick Corbin. Say what you will about the last five years of that contract, but they do not win the World Series in 2019 without Corbin.

So what are the Mets doing with the money they’re not paying Alonso and Díaz?

Well, they’ve signed Devin Williams, which is great. They’ve also swapped aging supporting players by moving Brandon Nimmo for Marcus Semien. That helps the team defensively, but it’s explicitly a lateral move. And remember, the world’s most expensive 83-win team can’t afford lateral moves; it has to get better.

As it stands, RosterResource is projecting a couple harrowing possibilities: cleanup hitter Mark Vientos and designated hitter Ronny Mauricio. And the pitching staff isn’t going to bail that shallow a lineup out. The only way to talk yourself into the notion that the Mets have a single top-five pitcher in the division is to combine a highly optimistic view of Nolan McLean with a highly pessimistic view of Zack Wheeler and Spencer Schwellenbach’s injury recoveries.

Now, it’s still early in the offseason. The Mets have lost two of our top 10 free agents, but six of the other eight are still out there. As surprising as it is to see Alonso leave, it’d be vastly more shocking for the Mets to go to Spring Training without making at least one massive signing. This team is best viewed as incomplete, rather than troubled.

But after losing two key players in two days, the Mets are going to be under pressure to complete their vision. They might be better off without Alonso, but we won’t be able to tell until they bring in a replacement.