☀️ Good Morning:
Long before Pete Alonso became the Polar Bear, or even a New York Met, he played third base at Jesuit High School in Tampa.
“I played third base in high school and I mean in college, my freshmen year I played a couple of games at third, and then eventually it just turned into we needed a first baseman, and I’m just a corner guy,” Alonso told Matthew Brownstein in 2017. “I think I got a pretty good arm, I’ve got an arm that can be effective at third base and I know that, I know that I have a pretty good arm for a first baseman, and a lot of people told me that’s pretty rare to see. And for me, it’s just making that transition pretty easy, it’s just understanding the game from the first base position because it’s a totally different game.”
It doesn’t take a baseball savant to figure out why he ended up at first, but you have to wonder if Pete ever thinks about what could have been had he been able to turn himself into a major-league third baseman.
On the day Alonso’s two-year $54 million deal to return to the Mets became official, fellow Scott Boras client Alex Bregman signed a three-year, $120 million deal with the Red Sox that includes opt outs after each of the first two seasons. Assuming deferrals don’t significantly reduce the present-day value, this is a massive short-term deal.
The contract Alonso spent nearly the entire offseason trying to secure ended up in the lap of a third baseman, who reportedly turned down multiple long-term offers, including a six-year, $171.5 million deal with the Tigers, to secure a higher annual value with opt outs in Boston, where he will play second base!
MOVING FORWARD: There’s a world where the Mets could have decided to pivot away from Alonso by aggressively pursuing Bregman and moving Mark Vientos to first, but ending up with Alonso and Vientos for a 2024 payroll outlay of $31 million sounds pretty good comparative to Bregman at $40 million (depending on deferrals) with the chance of owing him another $80 million if things turn south.
In fact, the only measurable difference between Bregman’s Age-30 season and Vientos’ Age-24 season is on defense.
Vientos hit more home runs (27 versus 26) in nearly 200 less plate appearances. The offense is there, he just needs to prove he can sustain it, while learning the ropes at third. At his age, the learning curve bends in a positive direction.
We have a lot to talk about this morning so…
☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!
🔥 Hot Stove
Alex Bregman wasn’t the only big story to break last night. The Padres came to terms with former Red Sox Nick Pivetta on a backloaded four-year, $55 million contract that includes an opt out after the second and third years.
Why does this matter to the Mets? Two words: Dylan Cease.
Pivetta joins a rotation that already includes Cease, Michael King and Yu Darvish. While San Diego can use the depth after losing Joe Musgrove to Tommy John surgery, and competing with the Dodgers in the NL West requires every arm you can get, the Pivetta signing pushes them exceedingly close to the second luxury-tax threshold of $261 million.
Trading Cease, who is set to make $13.75 million in his final year of arbitration, could suddenly become more pressing, perhaps loosening the price A.J. Preller was originally seeking earlier in the offseason.
As we discussed yesterday, a healthy Kodai Senga is the X-factor for making Jeremy Hefner’s rotation more formidable. Adding Cease would clearly move them up a notch, with Cease, Senga, and Manaea a legitimate top three.
Not to mention, with Alonso back, there is one less position open for tradeable positional prospects to take a step up to the major-league roster this season.
Something to keep an eye on.
🦵 A New Kick
Clay Holmes is ahead of the rest of the pitching staff as he tries to stretch himself out into a starter this season. On Wednesday, we got a glimpse into some tweaks he seemed to pick up from his time training with Tread Athletics during the offseason.
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