NEW YORK -- After setting the Mets’ home run record late last season, Pete Alonso proceeded to add 11 more, upping the all-time franchise mark from 253 to 264.
Then he left for Baltimore.
When Alonso hit his 300th home run at his old ballpark on Tuesday, receiving a curtain call in the ninth inning of an 11-inning, 7-5 win over the Mets at Citi Field, it underscored the notion that if he had stuck around long-term, he likely would have put the Mets’ record far out of reach. At his career rate of more than 40 homers per season, Alonso could have pushed past 300 this year, then 400 early in 2029, then perhaps eventually 500 if he maintained his health -- all in a Mets uniform.
But he didn’t do that. Instead, Alonso moved to Maryland, where he says he hopes to end his career. That decision makes it likely that the Mets’ home run record will fall again in the relatively near future.
Notably, a subplot of this week’s series between the Mets and Orioles was the fact that both Alonso and Francisco Lindor entered it sitting on 299 career homers. They were well aware of that fact, even if they didn’t focus on it until Alonso finally bashed No. 300 off Kodai Senga to tie Tuesday’s game in the ninth.
“There’s no race to 300,” Lindor quipped before Alonso reached his milestone. “He’s going to finish with probably 200 more home runs than me, so I’m not competing against Pete. No chance.”
Given an opportunity to match Alonso in both the bottom of the ninth and the bottom of the 11th, Lindor instead ripped a double and popped out. He’ll have another chance at No. 300 in the series finale on Wednesday.
For Lindor, 161 of his career homers have come with the Mets, placing him sixth in franchise history behind Alonso, Darryl Strawberry, David Wright, Mike Piazza and Howard Johnson. At his current rate of around 27 per season, Lindor would reach Alonso’s mark early in 2030. Enough buffer exists for Lindor to have a solid chance of becoming the Mets’ home run king even if the aging curve starts taking a significant toll; he must average only around 21 per season in the five years left on his contract to pass Alonso.
“We know he’s on the doorstep of 300 home runs,” interim manager Andy Green said. “We know how rare that is in baseball, but even how rarer it is as a shortstop. We know what he’s battled through in the times where he hadn’t performed up to expectation in his own mind, and he always comes back and performs. You look up at the end of the year, and that’s what Francisco Lindor does. We’re well past a decade in his career right now, and it’s really, really special what he’s been able to do.”
But Lindor’s reign as the Mets’ home run king figures to be brief. Although Juan Soto is currently tied for just 32nd on the Mets’ all-time list, he’s averaging 34 per season since joining the team. That’s probably a conservative bar for Soto’s future production, considering he missed significant time to injury this year and is only in his age-27 season -- five years younger than Lindor. If Soto can average 40 home runs over the next half decade, he would pass Alonso sometime in 2031 -- theoretically one season after Lindor does the same.
At that point, heading into the 2032 season, Lindor would be 38 years old; Soto would be 33. Lindor would be nearing the end of his contract; Soto would still have eight more years. As such, Soto’s coronation as the Mets’ home run king would be inevitable.
It’s worth noting that none of this may come to pass. Baseball is famously unpredictable, especially when it comes to aging arcs. Injuries happen. Performance fluctuations happen. At one point, it seemed like an ironclad lock that Wright would not only break Strawberry’s franchise record of 252 homers, but put it well out of reach for future generations. Wright didn’t wind up doing either of those things. To use another recent example, Giancarlo Stanton averaged 33 homers per year over his first nine seasons with the Marlins and Yankees. He has since mustered barely 18 per year.
It’s also worth noting that the Mets’ record of 264 homers is the fourth-lowest in MLB behind only the Rays (Evan Longoria, 261), Diamondbacks (Luis Gonzalez, 224) and Padres (Manny Machado, 222 and counting). In terms of all-time franchise marks, this is not a terribly difficult one to reach. While Lindor and Soto are both in position to do it, neither figures to push the Mets’ record into unbreakable territory.
Only Alonso, who “lived a lot of life here,” in his words, had a chance to accomplish that.
Instead, somebody yet unknown to Mets fans may have to be the one to do it.