Pete Alonso returned to New York City for the first time since signing a five-year, $155 million contract with the Orioles, as Baltimore began a three-game series with the Yankees in the Bronx on Friday night.
Alonso, who experienced his first taste of professional baseball with Low-A Brooklyn and then spent seven seasons anchoring the Mets, conceded that the road trip feels like a walk down memory lane.
“Waking up, walking around, I know I don’t live here anymore. But being here for so long, it’s just back in the old neighborhood,” Alonso said Friday afternoon. “It’s nice, obviously.”
It was especially nice for Alonso when he stepped to plate for the first time on Friday night and, on his first swing back in town, took Will Warren deep to the second deck in right field. But this was the Bronx, and not Queens. Yankees fans booed and the one who retrieved the home run ball threw it back.
Alonso, 31, opted out of the final year and $24 million on his contract following the 2025 season, which ended rather abruptly for the Mets. Alonso said Friday that he did not consider that the club’s season-ending loss in Miami would be his final game with the organization. His thoughts instead turned to his family -- his wife, Haley, was one week postpartum at the time after giving birth to their first child, Teddy. Alonso did not think about free agency until the conclusion of the World Series.
When he did, the picture quickly steered toward Baltimore. Alonso's free-agent market materialized much more quickly than it did the prior offseason, when he re-signed with the Mets on a shorter-term deal in February 2025.
“Both the Orioles as an organization and myself, I feel like we align and fit perfectly,” said Alonso, who homered in the second inning Friday. “When you have something good, you focus on it.”
Alonso said that he did not have any final conversations with Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns or owner Steve Cohen before signing with the Orioles. But he did talk with a number of former Mets teammates -- including Sean Manaea and Ryne Stanek -- as well as Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, who visited the gym that Alonso trains at in Tampa, Fla.
“For me, having that respect from the guys that I was with every day, the guys that I was going to battle with so to speak, from the manager to the players, having that respect is obviously nice,” Alonso said. “But there’s no final conversation from a brass or ownership standpoint.”
Alonso -- the Mets' franchise home run king -- said that did not surprise him.
“Things were progressing in a way with Baltimore and they were just like, ‘OK, all right,’” Alonso said. “The number one thing is throughout the whole process -- when you’re going through free agency and things are coming across, when things are so good, you don’t want to mess up the golden egg so to speak. I just wanted to nurture that flowering relationship and be able to come [to Baltimore].”
Alonso was off to a slow start with his new club, slashing .198/.306/.362 with four home runs entering Friday. The Orioles (15-16) were in third place in the American League East entering Friday night's games.
The Mets, meanwhile, have not benefitted from the complete roster overhaul that the club carried out in the offseason. New York kicked off a nine-game road trip against the Angels on Friday night touting an MLB-worst 10-21 record.
While Alonso said that he does not follow the Mets -- maintaining that he’s “locked in” on the Orioles -- he knows what his old club is going through. In 2024, the Mets bottomed out at 11 games under .500 in early June before a stunning turnaround saw them advance all the way to the National League Championship Series.
“Things were very bleak, from an outside perspective,” Alonso said. “Baseball is a long season. It’s a marathon. You look back at the 2024 Mets, that can be a perfect example. It’s bad, but there’s five months left in the season. There's always time. It’s a long season.”
Orioles beat reporter Jake Rill contributed to the reporting of this story.