Mets hold on after Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor homer
New York Mets' Pete Alonso celebrates his two-run home run against the Arizona Diamondbacks with Starling Marte during the fourth inning on Monday. Credit: AP/Ross D. Franklin
PHOENIX — The longer this goes on, the more Pete Alonso forces the question: What if it is not merely a hot start? What if it’s a huge season?
Alonso’s tear continued Monday night with a no-doubt 425-foot, two-run moonshot of a home run, a highlight in the Mets’ 5-4 win over the Diamondbacks.
As the Mets approach the one-quarter mark of the season — which they will hit this weekend at home against the Cubs — Alonso leads the team by a lot in average (.349) and OPS (1.143), among other categories. His on-pace-for numbers remain gaudy. If he keeps this up, he’ll finish with 41 home runs and 149 RBIs.
“I feel really comfortable,” Alonso said. “I feel like I’ve just leveled up my consistency.”
Francisco Lindor said: “He can hit any pitch, any location right now. It’s fun to watch. I’ve been seeing him for years doing something like this, but now he’s almost like a high-average hitter who has a lot of pop.”
And manager Carlos Mendoza: “When you look at his at-bats, it feels like there’s always runners on base . . . But there’s been a lot of situations where they’re not pitching to him and he’s taking his walks. So that’s a good sign there.”
That mastery of the strike zone is what has impressed Mendoza most over the past month-plus. For Alonso, the power is a given. Even in a down 2024, relative to his norm, he still hit 34 home runs.
But he has taken to the next level, an elite level, his many-times-daily decisions to swing (or not swing). He has walked in 16% of his plate appearances, a huge jump up from the 10% from last year, which was in line with his lifetime standard. And he is striking out even less often than that — 15% of the time, a massive drop from 25% last year.
There are other, deeper, gorier numbers that say the same thing. More than ever before, Alonso has been able to stick to that basic baseball tenet: Swing at strikes, don’t swing at balls.
“He’s not chasing,” Mendoza said. “He’s making some really good swing decisions and he’s not missing pitches. I think that’s where it starts for me, with his ability to control the strike zone. The way he’s doing it is pretty impressive.”
Lindor joined Alonso in hitting a three-run shot off Ryan Thompson in the seventh. The Mets (23-13) needed all of that wiggle room because of the bullpen’s near-implosion in the eighth. In his season debut, Dedniel Nunez faced three batters and walked all of them. Reed Garrett allowed all of those inherited runners to score, trimming the Mets’ advantage to one run.
Alonso’s throwing error in the bottom of the ninth opened the door for the Diamondbacks (18-17), but Francisco Alvarez and Lindor caught Alek Thomas trying to steal second to erase the baserunner, ending Arizona’s last real threat.
Alvarez’s throw was wide of the bag, but Lindor went with it, tagging Thomas’ right foot just before his left hand reached the bag.
Mendoza called it an “unreal” play.
“The ball caught me. I just went over there, stayed down with it and the ball hit my glove,” Lindor said. “Credit to Alvy. He was the one who made the throw. It’s almost like a diving play. Hopefully you time it right.”
The Mets fared well enough against righthander Ryne Nelson, who gave up two runs, three hits and four walks in 4 1⁄3 innings. He drew the spot start as the fill-in for marquee offseason signing Corbin Burnes, who after the Mets hit him around last week at Citi Field had this start skipped because of shoulder inflammation.
Nelson cruised early, needing only 34 pitches to navigate the first three innings. Then he threw another 34 pitches in the fourth inning alone. That was when Alonso struck (after Juan Soto’s second four-pitch walk in as many plate appearances).
“You see the reaction from [Yuli] Gurriel [Jr.] in left. He didn’t even move,” Mendoza said of Alonso’s blast. “Yeah, he’s locked in.”
Griffin Canning contributed the sort of outing that is becoming his norm with the Mets: effective but not all that long.
He limited Arizona to one run — on Corbin Carroll’s homer to lead off the bottom of the first — in five innings-plus. He struck out six and scattered six hits. When he issued his first and only walk of the night, to Pavin Smith to open the sixth, Mendoza yanked him at 82 pitches, his fewest of any start this year.
Canning felt he could’ve pitched deeper but understood the manager’s call.
“After that leadoff walk, four pitches were balls out of the hand.That’s when I was like, I’m going to go ahead and take him out,” Mendoza said. “But I thought he was good.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
