Pete Alonso's on-time power is keeping the Backyard Baseball Mets afloat

Pete Alonso doesn't do subtlety or nuance. When you put a bat in his hands, he has all the intent of Daryle “The Mad Bomber” Lamonica, the Oakland Raiders quarterback who practically invented the phrase “go long.” He is Tony “Two-Ton” Galento, the boxer who eschewed grace over the science of the sport and instead lived by the credo of “A Puncher's Chance.” Alonso is a home run hitter who has full power control of his bat.

“It doesn’t matter how he feels,” New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. “He’s always just a hit away.”

Alonso jumped in on Friday for the first pitch of what could be his last game at Citi Field in a Mets jersey, Game 5 of the National League Championship Series, with New York staring straight at elimination and Alonso facing his free agency. Two runners were on base. Alonso batted .133 in the Series without an extra-base hit. The Los Angeles Dodgers pushed him into obscurity, giving him a whopping 53% breaking pitches after seeing 32% in the regular season. Alonso seemed taken aback by the crushers' bouillabaisse. He was 0 for 11 despite all those rotations. He hadn't hit a home run with a slider in two months.

None of that — the pressure to win or go home, the possible end of his nine years in the Mets organization, the crisis, the spin — mattered little to Alonso, nor did the aesthetics or technical merits of his swing. He is a home run hitter. He always has a chance to hit.

“I mean, honestly, this is backyard baseball right now,” he said. “It’s like, yo, it’s playoff baseball. It's like just winding it up.

“Granted, there are people in the stands, people watching on TV… but honestly, you just call it a day and go play. It's backyard baseball. And to be honest: that's exactly how I see the whole thing. You put it on and leave. There are not all the analyses, all the results and things like that.”

Right-hander Jack Flaherty was on the mound for the Dodgers. He had torn the Mets apart with seven shutout innings in Game 1, while also setting the script for how they would beat Alonso. He threw 56% spin and grounded him twice on curveballs.

Of course, he started Alonso in Game 5 with a slider from center down. Alonso thought it was strike one. Flaherty doubled down the pitch, this time in the same area but deeper, to get a ball. Flaherty used the obvious ruse of an inside fastball well outside the plate to get a third slider into the same area. His mistake was that he didn't get any of his three sliders to get to the edge of the plate. Everyone stayed in the middle lane.

“I was deceived,” said Alonso. “I was in front of it.” The pitch was only 13 inches above the ground. Alonso has hit 230 home runs in his career, including the postseason. Only one of them landed on a pitch this close to the ground: a golf shot after a substitution by Alex Faedo in March. The Mad Bomber still went long. Very long. He smashed a pitch 13 inches off the ground – when deceived – 432 feet to center field for a three-run home run. It was a stunning display of raw power and a lifeblood for New York after two unseemly home defeats.

The Mets would win 11-5 in a ridiculous game with almost as many runners as the New York Marathon in two weeks. Alonso's haymaker was the biggest and most significant blow of the defeat.

“I’ve seen it before,” said outfielder Brandon Nimmo, Alonso’s teammate since Alonso reached the big leagues in 2019. “So it’s nothing new for me. I told him it reminded me of his first home run.”

Alonso hit a flyball off a Drew Steckenrider fastball on April Fools' Day 2019 in Miami.

“I remember thinking, Oh, this is going to be a double,” Nimmo said. “Then it goes over (the midfielder’s) head. And then it just kept going and went into the waterfall or something back there.”

It moved 444 feet to dead center.

“By now,” Nimmo said, “I’ve seen enough of it that I think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s gone.’ He’s incredible. He is one of the best power hitters in the game. And when he gets a ball on the run, he can leave any part of the stadium.”

Alonso said of the reaction to Flaherty's low slider: “Things are changing. Flaherty, he gave me a few moves last time.”

(Flaherty hasn't thrown a changeup to Alonso in 26 pitches and rarely throws the pitch to a right-hander.)

“(Yoshinobu) Yamamoto didn’t throw a splitter very often in his last start,” Alonso said. “He was like all cutters. It's just that crazy things happen in the postseason. It's like you can tear up all the analytics and everything else. You just go play baseball in the backyard.”

The entire Mets team wore the backyard baseball look and cheerfully roared through a huge sing-along of the game with the season on the line. Citi Field has turned into even more of a karaoke bar than usual this summer and fall. Flaherty didn't have nearly the stuff he had in Game 1.

“At least to me, he threw 94,” Lindor said. “But after we scored, it seemed like his speed slowed down.”

Flaherty's fastball dropped 1.9 mph. His curveball had a velocity of 154 rpm and a combined vertical and horizontal breakthrough of three inches. The Mets scored more runs without a strikeout than any team in postseason history, surpassing the Angels' feat of beating the Giants 11-10 without a strikeout in Game 2 of the 2002 World Series.

The Mets gained momentum in the series despite still trailing 3-2 in the series. They have the pitching advantage in Game 6 on Sunday: Sean Manaea against a Dodgers bullpen game. Game 6 will be the Mets' third elimination game in their last 11 games. They won the first, NLDS Game 3 in Milwaukee, because Alonso hit a three-run home run in the ninth. They won the second NLCS Game 5 because Alonso hit a three-run home run in the first.

Twice during the season and with his Mets career on the line, Alonso hit a three-run home run. He joined Bill Skowron of the Yankees in the 1955 and 1958 World Series and was the only player to hit three home runs in two elimination games. A polar bear and a moose share the same landscape.

Alonso's free agency will be a fascinating case study. A critic would point to his strikeouts (172 this year) and his subpar running and defensive skills. He can make any 3-1 play at first base look as shaky as a home video. But Alonso is a home run hitter in style and substance. He is a game changer.

Alonso played 846 regular season games and hit 226 home runs. In the same number of games in the game's history, only Aaron Judge (259), Ryan Howard (246), Ralph Kiner (241) and Albert Pujols (227) hit more home runs. Alonso's best extras are Howard, Kiner and Giancarlo Stanton, power hitters who defy conventional molds. Like late afternoon in Florida, the storms come out of nowhere. They can look terrible on one pitch and reach 432 feet on the next. In a game with fewer hits and rallies, this ability is not worthless. This is how postseason games and series are decided, despite our romantic notions of small balls.

“This is my second opportunity to play in the postseason,” Alonso said. “I've been saying that all along. It's like the entire low season in November, December, January and even early February. It's like lifting weights, conditioning, hitting, taking ground balls. And then spring training and the season. That's the purpose of the whole thing.

“It's just something very special. Really, really special. And this is fairytale stuff. I mean, it's wow. We might as well have fun, enjoy it, strap it on and go.”

I asked him when he enjoyed playing baseball the most, whether it was in Little League, at Plant High School in Florida or at the University of Florida.

“I would say the College World Series,” he said. “Because it’s a similar situation to the postseason. SEC Tournament, Regional Series, Super Regionals… It's like any playoff baseball. This is what you work for.

“It’s what you earn during the year. And once you’ve earned the right to compete, you roll the dice and shoot your best.”

Galento would be proud. The colorful 1930s boxer liked to boast that he held the record for the fastest knockout of all time: four seconds into the first round. “I sent him over the chops with my first punch,” Two-Ton Tony said, “and he went down like a sack of beans.”

It would be an apt description of what Alonso did with NLCS Game 5. He's always one shot away.