Pete Alonso's preparation leads pursuit of Darryl Strawberry's Mets home run mark, and more

Carlos Mendoza doesn’t have to think that hard when asked to name his favorite of the home runs Pete Alonso has hit during his tenure as Mets manager.

Alonso probably doesn’t have to think that hard, either.

Your great aunt with only a cursory knowledge of baseball could probably take a stab at it and guess correctly.

“The one against the Brewers,” Mendoza said before the game Tuesday, to the surprise of exactly no one. “That’s the one where, we’re almost on our way home and before you know it, we’re spraying champagne all over, and it was because of Pete.”

But then there is, of course, this drive to secure a solid No. 2 spot.

Alonso, who was 1-for-3 and homerless Tuesday, needs just two more to break Darryl Strawberry’s franchise record of 252 home runs. Barring disaster, he’s guaranteed to etch his name in the history books soon, but boy wouldn’t it be swell if he could do it here in Flushing.

See, Alonso’s homer against the Brewers happened in Milwaukee, and another iconic homer happened here at Citi…with no one there to see it.

“My favorite [walk-off] was my first walk-off homer in 2020 against the Yankees,” he told me a few months back.

I responded that the crowd must’ve gone nuts…before I realized my mistake.

Alonso responded to the gaffe charitably and with a slight smile.

“It was full of cutouts because it was 2020, but it was still great.”

The Mets have one more game Wednesday at Citi before traveling back to Milwaukee for a short, three-game road trip. And, while no one in Mets-land would mind a few Midwest taters, it certainly would be special to see him at least tie the record here. Tuesday, every time he came to bat, the crowd clamored for at least that – no more so than in the eighth, when he come up to chants of “Pete Al-on-so” with the bases empty and the Mets down a run in their eventual 3-2 loss to the Guardians (he grounded out).

“It’d be special,” Mendoza said. “I don’t want to put too much pressure on it…It’s going to happen and if it happens in the next couple days, that means we’re in a good place. But I think it’d be special to do it here.”

But… “He’s not talking about it,” Mendoza said. “It’s all about winning.”

And that’s been the ongoing theme. Alonso has said remarkably little about the quest for 253 this season, despite no shortage of people asking him about it.

Here he is, on June 8, after passing David Wright’s mark of 242 homers: “Right now, it’s just focus on winning but I don’t really think it’s going to truly settle in until later on.”

And here he is on July 5, when he was six away from tying Strawberry: “I just want to help the team win. That’s all I really want to do.”

But one goes with the other, right? Where would the Mets be without Alonso’s flair for hitting dingers when the dingers need hitting the most? They’re probably not making it to the National League Championship Series last year, that’s for sure. Maybe a lukewarm 2024 would have meant losing out on the Juan Soto sweepstakes. Maybe they’re not even sniffing first place right now, instead of being 2 1/2 games out.

A butterfly flaps his wings, Alonso homers against the Brewers in the ninth inning of the deciding game of last year’s wild card, and a franchise is forever changed.

And that, beyond any number, is what the Mets' hulking first baseman means to this team and this fanbase.

He is the cheerleader and the heartbeat of this team, but often, too, its propeller. And he doesn’t seem to stop. In the dugout during a game, he’s a bopping ball of energy.

The Mets this season have been woeful with runners in scoring position – their .232 average in those situations was 27th in baseball going into Tuesday. But Alonso has not: His .328/.440/.724 slash line with RISP leads the team in all three categories, as does his 13 homers. He has a .340 batting average in “late and close” situations – what MLB defines as a game in the seventh inning or later where a team is either trailing by three runs or fewer, tied, or up by a run.

“He's watching film 24/7,” Mendoza said. “We could be on a flight and you walk by his seat, and he's got his iPad, his notebook, and he's watching the whole pitching staff from the team that we're about to face. That says a lot…Sometimes, we’ve got to tell him to back off a little bit, because he’s taking 1,000 swings in the cages, he’s hitting early.”

Postgame, he’s studiously scribbling his takeaways in a journal he keeps for that purpose.

Which kind of explains why he sidesteps the talks of his legacy, this record, and his place in this franchise. To him, it genuinely seems like a means to an end. The wins don’t come without the homers and the homers don’t come without the preparation. And all of that is a scaffold toward the goal of finally breaking the Mets' long, long championship drought.

But other people can think about the context for him.

Earlier this year, as Alonso was closing in on him on the Mets' home run leaderboard, David Wright was asked to reflect on the feat.

“It just seems like every time the ball leaves his bat, he’s got a chance,” Wright said.

It also seems like every time the ball leaves his bat, the Mets have a chance. And that, in the end, is the point.