Mets Face Complex Pete Alonso Situation as he Enters the Final Year of his Contract

This offseason, I have been pondering the following question: Would the Mets have traded Pete Alonso if you, the fans, had not existed?

I do believe that Alonso’s decision to stay a Met is due in part to your presence. Because the Mets would have reasonable grounds to deal him in a laboratory. For example:

1) The Mets do not intend to go all out in their pursuit of contention in 2024.
2) The need for bats that make a difference is acute in this market.
3) For the past ten years, every trend has pointed away from overpaying players akin to Alonso: cornerbacks and non-athletes who will primarily play in their 30s for the duration of a long-term contract.
4) The noticeable discrepancy between the Mets’ assessment of Alonso’s value and that of his agent, Scott Boras.

It was a compelling argument to trade Alonso in that sterile setting. However, the Mets, particularly David Stearns and Steve Cohen, are real people.

Dealing with Alonso would only make Cohen’s current standing with the fan base worse. He is not nearly the same conquering hero as he was a year ago.

In the midst of a playoff chase, Stearns, the president of baseball operations for the Brewers, traded Josh Hader, and things did not go as planned. Josh Hader was in Milwaukee at the time. Pete Alonso is in New York right now.

Furthermore, Stearns—a lifelong Mets fan who was born and reared on the Upper East Side—knows he doesn’t want to start his administration with a choice this Polar-izing (if you get it, tell a friend). In his first offseason as the Mets’ manager, he had plenty to do without taking on that Bear (again, tell a friend about it), particularly with part of the base questioning whether he was brought in to bring small-market principles to Cohen World.

Therefore, pretty soon after taking on his new role, Stearns declared in public that he believes Alonso will start at first base for the Mets in 2024.

In the end, when the two crucial choices regarding Alonso up until this point were made, Stearns was not a Met:

• to add him to the Opening Day roster for 2019. I would like to say that was the correct course of action. It has been disgusting when teams purposefully kept players in the minor leagues to rig the system for manipulating service time and, among other things, make them play seven seasons in order to accrue the full six required for free agency.

However, that was the standard procedure at the time. Alonso’s free agency would have been postponed until after the 2025 season by even three weeks in the minor leagues.

• Not to trade him at the trade deadline of the previous year. His one year left until free agency would have drawn more in a transaction than it does now. Although Stearns was no longer in charge of the Brewers’ baseball operations at the time, he was still employed by them, so it is likely that he was aware of their offer when he was hired by the Mets and also learned about the Cubs’ bid.

Even if Stearns decided not to ask Alonso for bids this offseason, he would still have something to compare against. With one more year until free agency, he could extrapolate from what the Padres got in exchange for Juan Soto (the Yankees also acquired Trent Grisham). Although Soto is a more desirable addition, Alonso’s value would have probably increased in this market.

The positional market has mostly stagnated since Soto and Shohei Ohtani were removed from consideration for free agency. This is primarily due to the fact that, among other things, the industry does not seem to value players like Matt Chapman and Cody Bellinger as highly as (coincidentally) their agent, Boras.

However, the Mets’ deliberate choice includes their desire to try and compete this season. You could argue that in this position-hungry market, they ought to have attempted to trade Francisco Lindor and/or Brandon Nimmo if they were genuinely just interested in the long run. Alternatively, if they have well-rounded out around Alonso, Lindor, Nimmo, Francisco Alvarez, Jeff McNeil, and Kodai Senga, the Mets have a contender.

For now, this has overtones of the Yankees’ dealings with Aaron Judge, who is about to enter his walk year. The sides were far apart on what the long-term value of a New York-proven, homegrown, fan-favorite, elite power hitter was. The Yankees made another long-term offer in spring 2022, Judge rejected it, bet on himself, and won by hitting a franchise record 62 home runs to force Hal Steinbrenner to go places (nine years, $360 million) he had never imagined.

Alonso’s 53 home runs in 2019 eclipsed Judge’s 52 rookie record, which was set two years prior, thanks to those extra days. If Alonso surpasses Judge’s record of 63 home runs in a season, which was set two years ago, for a New York player, Cohen will probably have to reevaluate his financial options.

Neither side is publicly saying where they are at now. But Boras generally sets a very high bar and usually takes his players to free agency to gain clarity of their market value. I would suspect he will argue that Alonso should be in the Judge bucket due to being homegrown, New York-proven, a fan favorite, with elite power, and with greater durability to date. The Mets will argue Alonso is not the same athlete as Judge, nor as marketable, and that he is a first baseman and the market for that position has changed substantially in the past decade.

2014 is the demarcation line. That year, Miguel Cabrera and the Tigers came to an agreement on a first base record $248 million over eight years, with two years remaining until the extension started. Following the 2011 season, the Reds extended Joey Votto for ten years at $225 million (beginning two years later), the Tigers signed free agent Prince Fielder for nine years at $214 million, and the Angels signed Albert Pujols for ten years at $240 million. All of those surpassed Mark Teixeira’s eight-year, $180 million first base record he set with the Yankees following the 2008 season.

No first baseman has even eclipsed Teixeira’s contract, which is now 15 years old, since 2014. The longest contract is the $168 million, eight-year extension Matt Olson signed with Atlanta. The highly deferred six-year, $162 million contract that Freddie Freeman signed with the Dodgers, which reduced its current value to roughly $148 million, is the highest for a free agent. They were both in 2022.

In the offseason prior to his walk year, Rafael Devers inked a 10-year, $313.5 million contract extension with the Red Sox, knowing that he might spend the majority of that time playing first base or designated hitter. However, he signed to play third base going into his 26th season of baseball. Judge was 30 years old during his walk year, and Alonso is approaching his age-29 campaign.

In many of the cases for large first base contracts, there was a motivating desperation by ownership to do a deal. But since then the general industry practice is to ignore the desperation, because contracts like those of, for example, Cabrera and Pujols aged so poorly with thickening corner bodies regressing in production in their 30s.