In the Mets’ fourth game of the season, Pete Alonso broke out of a mini slump to start the season by cracking a grand slam that helped blow Monday’s game wide open en route to a 10-4 win over the Miami Marlins.
Alonso had just one hit during the first three games of the year before going 2-for-4 with four RBI.
But the big knock came as the meat of a seven-run fifth inning with nobody out and the count full against Marlins right-hander Cal Quantrill.
The slugger, who popped out to second and singled in his first two times up, did well not to chase pitches off the plate and got ahead of the laboring Quantrill 3-1, laying off balls below the zone. Alonso fouled off the next two pitches, the latter just getting a piece of a really good sinker at the bottom of the zone to stay alive.
On the next pitch, the seventh of the at-bat, the slugger got another Quantrill sinker in a much better spot: thigh high and over the outside of the plate.
“He earned that pitch,” manager Carlos Mendozasaid after the game, calling it a “really good at-bat” after taking breaking pitches and a fastball for a called strike that could have led to a rally-killing double play.
Rather than try and pull it – something Alonso did 41.6 percent of the time last year – he went with the pitch and slammed it, 105.9 mph off the bat and 400 feet to right center for a grand slam that only the cavernous Oracle Park in San Francisco would have held.
“Just got it over the plate and hit it hard,” Alonso said of the homer that extended the Mets’ lead to 6-1.
Part of the key to the at-bat, and his early ones against the starter and during the series against the Astros, Mendoza said, was Alonso doing really well “not chasing” pitches and laying off some tough ones.
“And that’s what you want to see,” he said. “You want Pete to control the strike zone and when they’re coming in the zone, we know he’s dangerous because of the power. I thought overall he’s giving us really good at-bats.”
In Houston, he “won some 3-2 counts by walking,” the skipper said. On Monday, he won by driving it out of the park to move 15 home runs behind David Wright and 25 behind Darryl Strawberry on the Mets’ all-time list.
Does the first one of the season feel different than the others? “Yeah, it does. It’s a long time without hitting one, and to finally do it in a big league game, it feels pretty cool. I can do it still,” the slugger with 227 to his career said with a smile.
Another encouraging aspect of the homer: In the extremely small sample size of the first series of the season, Alonso is taking the ball the opposite way 42.9 percent of the time and pulling it just 28.6 percent of the time.
Quality at-bats lead to quality results
“Really good at-bats up and down the lineup,” Mendoza said. “Controlled the strike zone and did damage when we needed to… it was good to see overall.”
The difference today from the weekend was adjustments off Quantrill the second time through the order.
