Pete Alonso's looming free agency probably 'got him'

PHILADELPHIA — Pete Alonso regularly deflects the questions, insisting he focuses on the small rather than the big.

He says he has his eye on the next pitch or the next game, not the next offseason.

Many people around him will recognize that such myopia is ideal, but quite impossible.

“The business side will take care of itself, and I have no doubt that it has gotten to him this year,” assistant coach Eric Chavez said Thursday after the most significant turnaround in Alonso's career. “I don’t care what anyone says. I don't care what he says. It has to be – he is human.

“The will and the desire to create a big year for yourself and the city, sometimes the will is just too great. But he persevered.”

Alonso, at a significant moment in his life, experienced a solid season for others and a subpar year for himself and was ready to enter free agency after the season.

If he carried that weight during a season in which he played all 162 games but hit .240 with a .788 OPS and 34 home runs, he didn't admit it.

His platform season didn't launch him into another MLB money-making stratosphere like Aaron Judge's 2022 season did.

At least Alonso hasn't made that jump yet.

Alonso mainly struggled with clutch situations all season long. He hit .232 with runners in scoring position and posted just a .525 OPS in “late and close” moments – defined primarily in the seventh inning or later when the batter's team is down three runs or less, tied or with a lead of one run.

He just didn't like enough big hits – and then he was given absolution in the most gigantic moment of his career.

Alonso's three-run, one-out home run in the ninth inning in Milwaukee, which effectively canceled all of the Mets' vacation plans and ensured that they would be at Citizens Bank Park for the start of the NLDS on Saturday, may have been the biggest turnaround in Mets history and was certainly part of the Alonso story.

The home run gave Alonso another series in a Mets jersey, at least one more home game at Citi Field and another chance to find an eye-opening payday on the open market.

“At the end of the day,” Francisco Lindor said in the celebratory clubhouse, “Pete will get paid if he does this in the postseason.”

The opportunity presents itself again to Alonso, who took advantage of it on Thursday.

He's a powerful and capable hitter, but he didn't declare himself a must-have hitter during his subpar regular season.

What happens if he makes it again in the NLDS after testing the Mets once?

NLCS?

World Series?

“He knows he’s one of the best hitters in the world,” Chavez said. “(This regular season was) not ideal for him or whatever, but everything will change for him in the future.

“Hopefully he puts an end to this whole thing – who cares what happened this year? Now it’s about what he does in his at-bats over the next two or three weeks.”