Maybe the Mets will sell, or maybe they’ll stand still, and we’ll know about all of that in due time. Maybe the Mets have one extended run in them, enough to make September interesting. More likely, we’ve already seen the most interesting games of the Mets’ 2023 season.
These all feel like footnotes right now.
This seems like a far more relevant and important question:
What in the world is wrong with Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil?
The Mets lost Thursday afternoon, halting a modest three-game winning streak and pushing them another few steps closer to postseason oblivion. Jose Quintana pitched fine in his Mets debut, two runs over five innings, but the bullpen did as the bullpen does, the offense did as the offense has done far too often this season, and the White Sox knocked off the Mets 6-2. Tough day all around for the Mets.
Tougher day still for the Mets’ homegrown core.
In the midst of an impossibly tough season for the erstwhile dynamic duo. Alonso managed an RBI single in the eighth inning, halting a 1-for-31 slide, and he committed an error in the top of the sixth, a few minutes after the Mets had pulled within 2-1. That invited Drew Smith to come completely unglued, as he has done way too often this year.
McNeil? He had another soft 0-for-3 at the plate, and the defending batting champion in the whole sport is now hitting .246. He also took two terrible routes on a couple of fly balls in the right-center gap in the decisive sixth inning, a total of three runs scoring on the two of them. McNeil is not an outfielder by trade, but he generally fields his position better than that, and his reaction to both indicated he should’ve been better on them, too.
“Overall I haven’t played well at all, and it’s not fun to not play well,” Alonso said. “There’s nothing wrong mechanically. I felt good today and it felt nice to get that hit, and I’m going to try to build off today.”
Said Mets manager Buck Showalter: “It’s painful to watch a great hitter like him go through this.”
He was referring to Alonso, but he could’ve been referring to both players. Alonso and McNeil burst on the scene together in 2019, the two of them All-Stars in their first full seasons. They both experienced ups and downs in 2020 and 2021, but last year blossomed into a pairing the Mets truly believed they could build around. McNeil won the batting title, hitting .326. Alonso had 40 homers and 131 RBIs. Alonso finished eighth in the NL MVP vote, McNeil 15th.
McNeil was rewarded with four-year, $50 million deal last winter. It seemed that Alonso and the Mets were merely waiting to see how much they might use Aaron Judge’s nine-year, $360 million deal with the Yankees as a comparison for a long-term, nine-figure pact for their own slugger.
It’s hard to envision a scenario in which either McNeil or Alonso will be part of any potential trade conversations the Mets will have the next 10 days, and they shouldn’t be: McNeil because he’s still on the books for three-plus years (and, despite his struggles, is still a lifetime .298 hitter), Alonso because he is such an essential part of the Mets’ present and three bad months shouldn’t alter that he has long been a vital part of their future, too.
“For us to get where we’d like to get,” Showalter said, “it’s going to mean that Pete is doing what Pete’s able to do.”
It is also possible — maybe even likely — that Alonso simply decided to come back to soon from the injury he suffered in Atlanta on June 7, when he was plunked on the hand by the Braves’ Charlie Morton. The evidence is surely there: a .132 average with only four homers and a .299 slugging percentage (though he’d also been hitting just .197 across his most recent 41 games before the injury, too).
McNeil’s problems are more puzzling, especially since it seemed he would be one of the prime candidates to be able to exploit the outlawing of the shift. But after peaking at .292 on May 28 he has hit just .187 in the 41 games since, with nine extra-base hits. Alonso was speaking for himself when he went into the Great 1980s rock songbook talking about how it’s possible to care too much but he, too, could’ve been talking about his partner, McNeil.
“It’s like 38 Special said,” Alonso said, resisting the temptation to break into song, “‘Hold on loosely. If you cling too tightly, you’re gonna lose control.’”
Bottom line?
Baseball is a flummoxing game, and there’s little logic to any of it sometimes. A lot of Mets have played below standard this year. But these are two players the Mets need to be able to rely on, and so they need to get right. It might not save the season, but it sure is necessary for the future.
