Pete Alonso does not do subtlety or nuance. Put a bat in his hands and he has all the intention of Daryle “The Mad Bomber” Lamonica, the Oakland Raiders quarterback who practically invented the phrase “go long.” He is Tony “Two-Ton” Galento, the boxer who eschewed any sweetness to the sport’s science in favor of living by the credo “a puncher’s chance.” Alonso is a home run hitter, lock, stock and barrel of his bat.
“It doesn’t matter how he is going,” New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. “He is always just one swing away.”
Alonso stepped in for the first at-bat of what he knew could be his last game at Citi Field in a Mets uniform, Game 5 of the National League Championship Series on Friday in which New York stared directly at elimination and Alonso faced the start of his free agency. Two runners were on base. Alonso was hitting .133 in the series without an extra- base hit. The Los Angeles Dodgers were spinning him into oblivion, throwing him a whopping 53% breaking pitches after he saw 32% during the regular season. Alonso seemed baffled by the bouillabaisse of breakers. He was 0-for-11 against all that spin. He hadn’t hit a home run off a slider in two months.
All of it—the pressure of win-or-go-home, the possible end to his nine years in the Mets organization, the slump, the spin—did not matter to Alonso, nor the aesthetics or technical merits of his swing. He is a home run hitter. He always has a puncher’s chance.
“I mean, honestly, this is backyard baseball right now,” he said. “It’s like, yo, it’s playoff baseball. It’s like, you just wind it up.
“Granted, there’s people in the stands, people watching on TV … but honestly, you just wind it up and you go play. It’s backyard baseball. And honestly, that’s just how I view this whole thing. You wind it up and you go. There’s not all the analytics, all the results and stuff like that.”
Righthander Jack Flaherty was on the mound for the Dodgers. He had carved up the Mets with seven shutout innings in Game 1, including laying down the lyrics to how they would pitch to Alonso. He threw him 56% spin and got him to ground out twice on curveballs.
Of course, he started Alonso in Game 5 with a slider, middle-down. Alonso took it for strike one. Flaherty doubled up on the pitch, this one in the same area but lower for a ball. Flaherty went through the obvious subterfuge of an inside fastball, well off the plate, to set up a third slider to the same general area. His mistake was not getting any of his trio of sliders to veer to the edge of the plate. All of them stayed in the middle lane.
“I was fooled,” Alonso said. “I was out in front of it.” The pitch was only 13 inches off the ground. Alonso has hit 230 home runs in his career, including the postseason. Only one of them came on a pitch so near to the ground: a golf shot off an Alex Faedo changeup back in March. The Mad Bomber went long nonetheless. Very long. He crushed a pitch 13 inches off the ground—when he was fooled—432 feet to center field for a three-run homer. It was a jaw-dropping display of raw power and a jolt of life to New York after two unseemly losses at home.
The Mets would win, 11–5, in a ridiculous game with nearly as many runners as the New York Marathon will feature in two weeks. Alonso’s haymaker was the biggest, most meaningful punch of the rout.
“I’ve seen it before,” said outfielder Brandon Nimmo, Alonso’s teammate since Alonso reached the big leagues in 2019. “So, for me, it’s nothing new. I told him it reminded me of his first home run.”
Alonso hit a fly ball off a Drew Steckenrider fastball on April Fool’s Day, 2019, in Miami.
“I remember thinking, Oh, that’ll be a double,” Nimmo said. “Then it gets over [the center fielder’s] head. And then it just kept on going and went into the waterfall or something back there.”
It traveled 444 feet to dead center.
“By now,” Nimmo said, “I’ve seen enough of them that I’m like, Oh, yeah, that’s gone. He’s incredible. He’s one of the best power hitters in the game. And when he gets a ball on the barrel, it can leave any part of the ballpark.”
Said Alonso about reacting to the low slider from Flaherty, “Things change. Flaherty, he threw me a couple of changeups the time before.”
(Flaherty has not thrown a changeup in 26 pitches to Alonso and rarely throws the pitch to any right-handed hitter.)
“[Yoshinobu] Yamamoto didn’t throw a splitter very much his last start,” Alonso said. “He was like all cutters. It’s just that crazy things happen in the postseason. It’s like you can rip up all the analytics and everything. You just go play backyard baseball.”
The entire Mets team sported that backyard baseball look, rollicking joyfully through a giant singalong of game with their season on the line. Citi Field was transformed into even more of a karaoke bar than it otherwise has been this summer and fall. Flaherty had nothing close to the stuff he had in Game 1.
“He came out throwing 94, at least to me,” Lindor said. “But then after we scored it seemed his velocity went down.”
Flaherty’s fastball was down 1.9 mph. His curveball was down 154 rpms and three inches of combined vertical and horizontal break. The Mets scored more runs without striking out than any team in postseason history, eclipsing the Angels’ trick of beating the Giants, 11–10, without striking out in Game 2 of the 2002 World Series.
The Mets seized momentum in the series, though they still trail in the series 3–2. They have the pitching advantage in Game 6 Sunday: Sean Manaea against a Dodgers bullpen game. Game 6 will be the Mets’ third elimination game in their past 11 games. They won the first, NLDS Game 3 in Milwaukee, because Alonso hit a three-run homer in the ninth. They won the second, NLCS Game 5, because Alonso hit a three-run homer in the first.
Twice with the season and his Mets career on the line did Alonso hit a three-run homer. He joined Bill Skowron of the Yankees in the 1955 and ‘58 World Series as the only players to slug three-run homers in two elimination games. A Polar Bear and a Moose sharing the same landscape.
Alonso’s free agency will be a fascinating case study. A critic would point to his strikeouts (172 this year), below average skills running and defense. He can make every 3–1 play at first base look as shaky as home video. But Alonso, in style and substance, is a home run hitter. He is a game-changer.
Alonso has played 846 regular season games and hit 226 home runs. Through the same number of games in the history of the game, only Aaron Judge (259), Ryan Howard (246), Ralph Kiner (241) and Albert Pujols (227) hit more home runs. Alonso’s best comps are Howard, Kiner and Giancarlo Stanton, power hitters who defy conventional patterns. Like late afternoons in Florida, storms from them come out of nowhere. They can look awful one pitch and hit one 432 feet the next. In a game with fewer hits and rallies, that skill is not nothing. It is how despite our romantic notions of small ball, postseason games and series get decided.
“This is my second opportunity to play in the postseason,” Alonso says. “I’ve said this the whole way. It’s like the entire offseason during November, December, January and even the beginning of February. It’s like lifting weights, conditioning, hitting, taking ground balls. And then spring training and the season. Like, this is what it’s all for.
“It’s just really special. Really, really special. And this is fairytale stuff. I mean, it’s wow. Might as well have fun, enjoy it, and strap it on and go.”
I asked him when he had the most fun playing baseball until now, whether it be Little League, Plant High School in Florida or at the University of Florida.
“I’d say the College World Series,” he said. “Because it’s a similar type situation to playing in the postseason. SEC Tournament, Regional Series, Super Regionals … It’s just like any playoff baseball. This is what you work for.
“It’s what you earn throughout the regular course of the year. And once you earn a right to go, you roll the dice and shoot your best shot.”
Galento would be proud. The colorful 1930s boxing character liked to boast that he held the record for the fastest knockout ever: four seconds into the first round. “I belted him across the chops with my first punch,” Two-Ton Tony said, “and down he went like a sack of beans.”
It would be an apt description to what Alonso did to NLCS Game 5. He is always one swing away.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Pete Alonso's Promptly Timed Power Is Keeping the Backyard Baseball Mets Afloat.
