Mets Will Welcome Back An Old Friend Tonight For Orioles

The New York Mets made a number of significant moves in the offseason, and almost none of them worked out. But one of the biggest moves was the one they didn’t make, which was making something more than a token effort to re-sign the slugging first baseman, who landed with the Baltimore Orioles as he got the deal he wanted. 

The logic behind this is familiar enough at this point. The Mets wanted to emphasize run prevention, and that’s not Alonso’s strength. There were all kinds of metrics criticizing his lack of range, but the player they signed to replace him, Jorge Polanco, couldn’t stay on the field. He’s been shut down to have surgery for his Achilles issue, and the Mets are hoping to get something out of him next year. 

In the meantime, there’s Alonso, who’s still doing what he does, which is hit homers. He’s got 35, to be exact, and he’ll come into Citi Field tonight in an Orioles uniform with 299 career homers, which is the same number as Francisco Lindor. 

“It better be electric,’’ said Lindor in a piece written by Max Ralph of MLB.com. “I hope people go crazy for him. He deserves it.”

Alonso signed a deal for seven years, $155 million with Baltimore, and it’s paying off big in year one. He’s hit nine homers in August to put the Orioles back in postseason contention, sort of, although they’re four games back in the wild card race with two teams ahead of them and just 12 games left to play. 

Alonso also got his 100th RBI over the weekend, which si the fourth time he’s done that in the last five years, but his reaction wasn’t all that. 

"I mean, yeah, great, awesome. But, today, I got my 100th RBI. Whoop-de-do. Didn’t win the game,” he said. “I play to win."

The Mets, meanwhile, have a combined .685 OPS from their first basemen this year, which is the fourth-worst in baseball. Alonso thought he would be returning to New York, but instead it was teh Orioles who swooped in when the Mets showed little interest in re-signing him. 

“Things were progressing in a way with Baltimore and they were just like, ‘OK, all right,’” Alonso said in back in May when he returned to homer against the New York Yankees “When you’re going through free agency and things are coming across, when things are so good, you don’t want to mess up the golden egg so to speak. I just wanted to nurture that flowering relationship and be able to come [to Baltimore].”