Pete Alonso's departure from Mets opens door for David Stearns to mold the club the way he wants
Former Met Pete Alonso reacts after striking out in the first inning against the Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on July 10 in Baltimore, Maryland. Credit: Getty Images/Greg Fiume
On Friday, Pete Alonso will put on another team’s cap and jersey for the first time in his professional career, something he probably never imagined during happier times in Flushing.
Seeing him in that black-and-orange Orioles gear, standing on a stage at Camden Yards, is going to be weird, just as it was when Jacob deGrom was introduced wearing a Rangers uniform at Globe Life Field in 2022.
At least deGrom got an offer from the Mets, albeit one that was easily refused. Alonso didn’t receive that courtesy, and after 14 months of relative indifference from the front office, he finally took the hint — and a five-year, $155 million contract from the Orioles.
We had our suspicions that the Mets’ winter was trending in this direction when president of baseball operations David Stearns stunningly dealt Brandon Nimmo to the Rangers four days before Thanksgiving, a particularly early jump-start to baseball’s shopping season. If Stearns could jettison the longest-tenured Met, nearly strong-arming Nimmo to waive his no-trade clause by saying the swap awaited only his last-minute approval, then that was basically ripping off the Band-Aid.
Letting Alonso walk was a piece of cake by comparison. No heavy lifting involved. Just bow out of the negotiations, and that’s what happened this week. Alonso agreed to a deal after visiting with a handful of teams at the winter meetings in Orlando, including the Orioles (and not the Mets).
Nothing Stearns can do this offseason will erase the fans’ trauma over Alonso’s departure. He’s going to wear that for the remainder of his Mets tenure, and it’s going to get even more uncomfortable when the Polar Bear is routinely swatting baseballs out of hitter-friendly Camden Yards.
But if Stearns is bold enough to dump Alonso, knowing full well that it would make him Public Enemy No. 1 among his own fan base, that makes us believe he’s also prepared to take some big swings to upgrade a Mets roster that has been gutted during the past few weeks.
Which is why Friday’s unveiling of Alonso in Baltimore serves as the closing of that Mets chapter and the gateway to a transformative winter by Stearns from this point forward. But this is going to get worse for the Mets before it gets any better, barring some blockbuster deal going down as Alonso puts on his Orioles cap.
There’s going to be plenty of grieving on social-media channels, and it will be interesting to hear what Alonso says about the current exodus in Flushing along with his frosty relationship with the front office.
Bottom line, Stearns had Alonso for two seasons and evidently came to the conclusion that his $155 million can be allocated more productively during the next five years.
With regard to Alonso, we’re only speculating, because Stearns has yet to speak about losing him and Edwin Diaz, who signed a three-year, $69 million deal with the Dodgers this week. But after the Nimmo trade, we got an idea where Stearns’ head was at following an 83-win season that cratered from mid-June on despite a $340 million payroll that was the second highest in the majors. He preferred Marcus Semien over Nimmo because of the run prevention and roster flexibility the 35-year-old Gold Glove second baseman provides.
“I think it’s a recognition that what we did last year wasn’t good enough,” Stearns said last month. “And running back the exact same group wasn’t the right thing to do.”
He certainly has accomplished that mission. Putting together a group that is superior to the underachieving 2025 squad hardly is guaranteed, though, and the rest of the National League heavyweights continue to bulk up around them.
Diaz winding up with the Dodgers just increased their odds of a three-peat, and two days later, the next-best closer on the market, Robert Suarez, signed a three-year, $45 million deal with Atlanta to join the recently re-signed Raisel Iglesias (one year, $16 million).
The Mets did want to retain Diaz, but he took an extra $3 million from the Dodgers without bothering to ask Stearns if the Mets would go up on their own three-year, $66 million bid (already a record AAV for relief pitchers).
On the free-agent front, Suarez would have been a decent Sugar substitute, but the Mets for now seem intent on using Devin Williams (three years, $51M) in the closer’s spot.
Kyle Schwarber choosing to stay with the Phillies this week on a five-year, $150 million deal wound up directly impacting Alonso, too. Once the Orioles missed out in their own pursuit of Schwarber — despite offering the same amount to this year’s runner-up for National League MVP — they immediately pivoted with that cash and gave it to Alonso.
That circles us back to the Mets, who now have all the unspent money on Diaz and Alonso available to fill some of their many roster holes. Stearns sounds reluctant to go big on long-term deals, and though Cody Bellinger probably would be the exception, the bidding for him could go higher than anticipated given the multiple teams in the hunt, including the Yankees.
“We have a lot of resources — no team has unending resources,” Stearns said this week in Orlando. “We’ve got all the resources we need, all of the payroll space we need, to put a really good team on the field.”
It won’t feel that way Friday when Alonso dons his Orioles jersey, but there’s a lot of offseason left and plenty of time for Stearns to pick a few new faces of his own to introduce at Citi Field.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
