The Case Against an Alonso Extension
I hate it, but it makes some amount of sense
Big news: my book is out! It’s called “Only in Queens: Stories from Life as a New York Mets Fan,” and it’s available on Amazon in paperback and e-book format. If you read this newsletter and have fond memories of Ike Davis’ breakout rookie season or Dae-Sung Koo’s big day in 2005, I’m confident it’s the book for you, and I hope you’ll give it a look.
Also, I appeared on the latest episode of the “Simply Amazin’” Podcast to talk about the book, the Mets’ offseason, and why I still believe in Brett Baty, among other topics. Give it a listen!
I love Pete Alonso. I’d like him to be a Met for life. If news broke tomorrow that he’d signed a 10-year contract extension, I would pop a bottle of champagne.
David Stearns and the front office, on the other hand, don’t seem particularly eager to get Alonso signed to an extension. I hope I’m wrong, and they’re just keeping things under wraps, but there has been no sign that that’s true. And while I don’t like that Alonso remains unsigned, I hate to say that I can see where the Mets are coming from.
In 2024, there are basically three possibilities: Alonso has a superstar season (call it .280/.360/.580), Alonso has a solid season (.260/.340/.520), and Alonso has a just-fine season (give or take .240/.320/.490). If we call the possibilities roughly equal, or weight it something like 25%-50%-25% toward the middle one, there’s a pretty solid chance that he’ll be roughly in line with his career averages. He’ll very likely improve from his 2023 numbers, since his BABIP was a shockingly low .205 last season, so let’s say, hypothetically, that it’s fairly likely that he returns to roughly where he was in 2021 and 2022, over which he batted .267/.348/.518 with about 38 home runs per year.
Right now, Alonso is coming off a season in which his OPS sank to .821, but he elevated his power, hitting 46 home runs. So if he puts together a .267/.348/.518 season with 38 home runs, the contract he’ll command — compared to the one he might command at this moment — will certainly rise. But how much will it rise? I would say…probably not exorbitantly.
Let’s say — again, hypothetically — that at this moment, Alonso is on track for an eight-year, $168 million extension (exactly what Matt Olson got entering his age-28 season coming off a .911 OPS). If Alonso bats .267/.348/.518 with 40 home runs in 2024, let’s say he instead commands a nine-year, $220 million deal.
That’s an increase that the Mets incurred by withholding the hypothetical extension — but over nine years, it’s not much of an increase. And by taking this patient approach, the Mets would leave open two important avenues of reward.
First, if Alonso struggles, it could decrease the contract he ends up accepting, or it could make the Mets realize — in the Michael Conforto vein — that they may not want to give him a nine-figure deal at all.
Second, if Alonso dominates, the Mets will still have exclusive negotiating rights if they want to re-sign him — and if they don’t want to re-sign him, he could turn into one of the larger trade chips of the century.
Here are Alonso’s numbers on Aug. 1 of each of the past three seasons:
2021: .259/.334/.503, 23 home runs
2022: .276/.352/.536, 26 home runs
2023: .218/.314/.506, 30 home runs
Three years in a row, he’s reached the deadline with an OPS above .800 and at least 23 home runs. The evidence, I think, points toward his 2021-’22 numbers being closer to the norm.
There’s no playoff team — none — that doesn’t want to add an extra DH-type bat heading into August and September. So if Alonso reaches the Trade Deadline closing in on 30 home runs with an OPS above .850, can you imagine the return he could generate in a trade?
Seriously — imagine it. When the Braves traded for Olson, they gave up their No. 1 AND No. 3 prospects, along with two others. Alonso, mashing, the biggest bat on the market, going to a team desperate for a big bat? The return could be utterly astronomical.
Or the Mets could simply not trade him, let him play out the year, and re-sign him afterwards, just like they did with Brandon Nimmo last offseason. Emotionally, I don’t like the uncertainty of that approach. Pete is already a Mets icon — not to mention on track to easily break the all-time franchise home run record within two years — and I’d like him to have that chance, and to stay a Met for many years to come. But from a coldly logical perspective, I understand the thinking. “Wait and see” is almost never a satisfying approach in the short term. That’s pretty much definitional. But in the long term, where the Mets are focused, it makes a lot of sense — much as I hate to admit it.