BREAKING: Mets, Pete Alonso agree to a two-year, $54 million contract

The Mets retained the most prolific power hitter the franchise has ever produced on a short-term deal

Finally.

The Mets and free-agent first baseman Pete Alonso – the most prolific power hitter this organization has ever developed – have agreed to a two-year, $54 million contract.

Alonso can opt out after the first year of his two-year contract. He will earn $30 million in 2025. If he doesn’t opt out, Alonso will earn $24 million in 2026. He will receive a $10 million signing bonus, and the club’s deal with Alonso is pending a physical.

He had the option of signing a three-year, $71 million deal, but opted for the two-year with an opt-out after year one.

By his own standards, Alonso had a down year in 2024, although he still managed to hit 34 home runs and drive in 88 runs. His OPS was .788, a career low, and his struggles with runners in scoring position were exhaustingly chronicled and discussed as the year went on.

Still, since he came up in 2019, there is one player who has more home runs in the majors than Alonso (226), and that is Aaron Judge (232). Alonso sits third all-time in Mets history with his 226 home runs, behind only David Wright (242) and Darryl Strawberry (252), and he has a chance now to become the franchise’s all-time home run leader as soon as the 2025 season, as he’s just 26 behind Strawberry. Among players to have played at least 500 games with the Mets, Alonso’s 134 OPS+ ranks third all-time, his .854 OPS fifth all-time, his .514 slugging percentage third, and his 586 RBI sixth in club history.

Alonso has the fourth-highest fWAR (17.3) among MLB first basemen since 2019, trailing only Freddie Freeman (30.7), Matt Olson (21.5), and Paul Goldschmidt (21.2).

Alonso has hit at least 34 home runs in all five of the 162-game seasons he has played and has had 94 RBI or more in four of the five as well. Alonso has played in 846 of the club’s 870 regular season games since the start of the 2019 season, having played at least 152 games in all five of the 162-game seasons he’s participated in during that span.

Alonso had a strong postseason in 2024, hitting .273/.431/.568 with four home runs and 10 RBIs in 13 games. He single-handedly got them into the Division Series against the Phillies, thanks to his heroic home run in Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series off star closer Devin Williams, making up for a season of struggles in the clutch with a great three-week run in the postseason.

For much of the off-season, it was unclear if the Mets would bring Alonso back into the fold, despite the emotional attachment Alonso has with the club and both its past and future history. Still, both David Stearns and Steve Cohen were clear in their interest to retain Alonso right from the beginning, despite a public willingness to move on from Alonso after Cohen described the terms Alonso was seeking as, “asymmetrical.”

Still, Cohen specifically remained hopeful a deal could be worked out on Amazin’ Day at Citi Field in January, as well as when he spoke about this topic during Juan Soto’s introductory press conference on December 12 at Citi Field, as did Stearns during the Winter Meetings in Dallas.

Alonso also maintained his position all year long on loving New York and the Mets and wanting to be back with the Mets.

Still, Alonso turned down a seven-year, $158 million contract extension in 2023 from then Mets GM Billy Eppler, according to the New York Post, which would’ve included his final year of arbitration in 2024. That offer had a total average annual value of $22.5 million. He has since changed agents from Apex Baseball to the Boras Corporation and decided to test free agency this winter.

His financial gamble this winter took a hit when Christian Walker agreed to a three-year, $60 million deal with the Astros, setting up a market comparable to which placed him where he ultimately landed, that which is only marginally above the average annual value he turned down in 2023 in the Mets’ offer to extend him. He then saw other dominoes fall to potential suitors in the market when Paul Goldschmidt signed a one-year contract with the Yankees, the Guardians traded Josh Naylor to the Diamondbacks, and then the Guardians turned around and signed Carlos Santana to a one-year contract, all in a span of 24 hours on December 20 and 21.

But even if abbreviated, it all worked out for Alonso and the Mets, who will now have a chance to shatter numerous club records and remain a part of the core of this franchise. It was a reunion that always seemed logical and perhaps inevitable, and as the free agent market became more and more defined, Alonso seemed destined to re-join the Mets as his options became fewer and further between.

Alonso will rejoin the Mets in what is already an augmented and formidable top of the lineup that includes Soto, Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, and Mark Vientos. A combination of José Siri and Tyrone Taylor is expected to be in center field, and the Mets - as of now anyway - are keeping an open mind to how the innings are distributed at second base. Francisco Álvarez is expected to be the club’s number one catcher heading into the regular season.

The Mets had 109 wRC+ as a team last season with this current group minus Soto, the fourth-highest mark in the National League. Their 25.9 fWAR among their offense was the sixth-highest mark, again without Soto.

With Alonso back in the fold, the Mets are now projected to have the third-highest fWAR in 2025 (50), according to FanGraphs, behind only the Braves (51.6) and the Dodgers (55.9).

In addition, with Alonso back, this likely means Mark Vientos will remain at third base with Luisangel Acuña, Brett Baty, and Ronny Mauricio in the mix at second base with Jeff McNeil or possibly occasional opportunities at third base.

But perhaps most important in the immediate term, Alonso’s return eliminates a situation where the Mets would’ve otherwise had three infield positions up in the air heading into spring training this season, and now have one of the most formidable lineups in the National League.

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Jeff Passan of ESPN was the first to report Alonso and the Mets had agreed to a contract. Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported the terms of the contract. Bob Nightengale of USA Today first reported the contract options for Alonso.