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Pete Alonso hit a home run in a losing effort on Saturday. The slugging first baseman added to his team-leading tally with his 43rd home run of the season. The Mets have had a poor season, but that's not really the fault of the first baseman.
Saturday happened to be Alonso's wife's birthday, a day he has hit home runs on before. In fact, he's done it several times, so if there's a day the slugger is going to go deep, it's probably September 9 every year.
The first baseman went deep for the New York Mets in the top of the eighth to cut the deficit to 7-3. DJ Stewart went deep later that inning to give them new life, but the team still fell short.
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Despite Alonso's best efforts, the Mets dropped their third straight game and second in a row to the Minnesota Twins. They will now try and salvage the series on Sunday in the finale.
This dropped the Mets to 64-77 and within a half game of dead last in the NL East. They're 28 games back of the Atlanta Braves and just half a game up on the Washington Nationals.
The Mets may not have won, which is eventually Alonso's chief ambition, but he can take solace in the fact that he kept a wonderful tradition alive.
Hitting a home run on any day of the year is tough, but to be able to do it on a specific day multiple times is quite a rare feat indeed. He and his wife can enjoy that moving forward.
Pete Alonso's good year continued
Pete Alonso knocked his 43rd home run of the year on Saturday. That's the third-most in baseball, just behind Matt Olson and Shohei Ohtani. The Mets have been poor, but Alonso has not.
Alonso's .226 batting average would suggest that he's not having a good year, but that's not the case. He has been hitting a lot of home runs, and his oveall offensive metrics are good.
His xBA of .257 also suggests that he's getting a little bit unlucky. The slugger hasn't been elite on defense, but he's been pretty great at the plate. He's far from the reason the team has struggled.
