Pete Alonso still has time to turn around a lackluster year.
Perhaps the first baseman will thrive playing in the same spot where Aaron Judge had his best season ever heading into free agency.
Alonso, who had hit just one home run in 69 at-bats, hit a two-run homer off Gerrit Cole in the top of the fourth inning to lead the team to a 12-3 victory.
It was Alonso’s 20th homer of the season, but it’s still far off his usual pace: He has never hit fewer than 37 homers in a full season and as of Wednesday was homering in just 4.4 percent of his plate appearances, the worst of his career.
“He’s really good,” Francisco Lindor said. “He’s got the bat on the ball, but he’s hitting it foul. Baseball is baseball. He’s working hard and doing what he can. If he does what he needs to do, he’ll end up hitting 35-40 home runs.”
But it’s been a miserable year overall for Alonso. Before getting just two hits in the series finale over the weekend in Miami, the first baseman was 11 for 57 at-bats with just three extra-base hits in 15 games and his OPS dropped from .811 to .767.
But Alonso reached base three times at Miami on Monday and then contributed to a win with two more hits and a double in the Subway Series opener at the Bronx on Tuesday.
And on Wednesday, he hit one of the Mets’ three homers off Cole, and also drew a walk in the eighth inning after the Mets had built an insurmountable lead.
They hit a total of five home runs against a Yankees pitching staff that has been weak as of late.
It’s clear that the Mets are a team to be reckoned with for the rest of this season, and Alonso has gone from a player who said he didn’t want to be traded when the Mets potentially could have sold him before the July 30 deadline to a player who can be counted on to be his usual force down the stretch regardless of who is acquired by Tuesday’s deadline.
“We are in a better position than we were in May,” manager Carlos Mendoza said before the match.
The matchup against the Yankees also gives Alonso an advantage, as he has 13 hits in 35 at-bats, two doubles, four home runs, six walks and 10 RBIs in his last 10 games against them.
