Pete Alonso and Dominic Smith are in a true battle for the Opening Day first base job and that was reaffirmed by Brodie Van Wagenen yesterday when he said they would take “the best team north,” in reference to whether or not Alonso would be sent down for service time purposes.
Alonso, 24, helped himself on Saturday as he went 2-for-4 with a solo home run against the Boston Red Sox to help raise his Spring Training average to .423.
The home run wasn’t just an average one, though, as Alonso hit a moonshot to left field off Tyler Thornburg that towered over the Green Monster at JetBlue Park and ended up leaving it all together as can be seen below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4mkKmiV81k
After the game, Alonso talked about the success he’s been having this Spring and how he believes everything he has been working on is finally showing as detailed by Matt Ehalt of NorthJersey.com.
“I’m just really happy with all the hard work and preparation coming together. Having tangible success in games, that’s really huge and a huge confidence boost. I’m really happy with how I’m playing right now. I’m going to keep on continuing to prepare the best I can for each day and see what happens.”
Former Met and current Boston Red Sox manager, Alex Cora, went as far as to say that Alonso is “probably the best player in Florida right now.”
While his offense is what everyone is taking note of, Mickey Callaway has been quite impressed with the strides Alonso has been making on defense throughout Spring Training.
“All the little things it takes to be a quality major league player, he’s doing them on defense. That’s probably been the most surprising thing.”
Meanwhile, the team is currently trying to decide how to proceed into the season, unsure of whether or not they will actually go through with having Alonso start the year in the majors and lose a year of control or if the team will wait until mid-April to call him up and open the year with Dominic Smith at first.
Smith, 23, is having a phenomenal Spring in his own right, hitting .435 with one home run and six RBI. In fact, he has the most hits on the team with 10, but Alonso remains only one behind him with nine.
Despite the obvious fact that the two of them are competing for one job, Alonso is actually glad that Smith is doing well so far.
“I’m really happy he’s playing well. I don’t want anyone to do bad. He’s a teammate of mine. I want him to do his best as he can and do the best I can.”
This position battle is definitely going to be the talk of Spring Training for the Mets over the next 16 days before the team leaves Florida in preparation for Opening Day.
