Mets All-Star Pete Alonso on Monday was named National League Player of the Week for the third time in his career and is the first Met to win the award this season. Alonso’s American League counterpart for the award was Shohei Ohtani who dazzled both on the mound and in the batter’s box during the week of July 24-30.
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Leading up to his breakout performance this past week, Alonso was mired in the biggest slump of his career since making the team in the beginning of the 2019 season. The Mets’ slugger led the entire major leagues in home runs for the first two and a half months of the season, but that would come to a halt as a Charlie Morton fastball ran in on and hit Pete in the hand on June 7th. Despite making a speedy recovery from the injury, you could tell Pete was not the same as his batting average fell 28 points and his OPS fell nearly 100 points in the month following his return.
Alonso showed signs of life prior to his award-winning week as he finished off a series in Boston with a pair of two-hit games. But, the Polar Bear would break out in a big way in New York as he parlayed his performance in Boston into two double home-run performances against the Yankees and Nationals. His league-leading four home runs and 12 RBIs in the six game span, paired with an impressive .304 BA and 1.196 OPS, won Alonso player of the week honors and led the Mets to a 4-2 record during that span.
Alonso now has 30 home runs and 75 RBIs this season—leaving him on pace for a 46-home run season and nearly 120 RBIs.
