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.
Alosno had just one hit during the first three games of the year before going 2-for-4 with four RBI and added his fourth walk of the night. 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 Mendoza said 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, when know he’s dangerous becuase 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 than the weekend was adjustments off Quantrill the second time through the order.
“I thought we chased the first time around and thought we made some adjustments and finally got the hit with runners in scoring positions.”
While extra-base hits – three in total – powered the big fifth, it started, Alonso noted, with Luisangel Acuña beating out an infield hit.
“Him getting that leadoff single was huge, [Jose Siri] hitting the double in the gap that was big-time, and then Juan [Soto] and [Starling Marte] having great at-bats, that set up the whole thing,” Alonso continued. “But you can’t have that inning without team quality at-bats, and we did that throughout the entire game.”
After a tough stretch for the bats in Houston, the 10 runs on 11 hits (plus three walks and two hit by pitches) were good to see, but no surprise to the second-year skipper.
“We know we have a good offense, and you know at times you’re gonna go through some stretches that it’s gonna hard,” he said. “You’re gonna be facing some tough pitching staff and that was the case against Houston. And [Tuesday] we got [Marlins ace Sandy] Alcántara, so we gotta bring it tomorrow.
“I’m pretty confident on those guys, and when we’re clicking, we could be pretty dangerous.”
Marte, Alonso, and Brandon Nimmo homered with no help in Monday's win. But that wasn't the case for everyone against Miami...
Luis Torrens’ hard work leads to good luck
With a runner on first and one out in that big fifth inning, Torrens took the first pitch he saw from Miami reliever George Soriano and gave it a ride to center; the ball was smacked 102.6 mph off the bat and traveled 398 feet.
And then it became a life lesson about how it is better to be lucky than good.
Center fielder Derek Hill raced back to the warning track and had a beat on the ball. With a leap just before the fence, Hill had the ball in his glove. The only issue: the ball didn’t stay there. The bigger issue: Hill’s intervention propelled the ball over the fence for a two-run home run and an 8-1 Mets lead.
"He helped that one a little bit, but it's a part of the game,” Torrens was brave enough to admit after the game.
Torrens, unsure if Hill had caught the ball and was acting as if he hadn’t, stopped halfway between first and second before waving at Hill.
“In the beginning, I didn’t really know what happened,” the catcher said, speaking through an interpreter. “So I’m looking if it’s in or out and then saw his glove and he didn’t have it.”
He added: “I thought [Hill] was trying to play the situation off there, but then I saw it was serious that [the ball] wasn’t in the glove.”
The Marlins asked for a crew chief review of the home run, which was fruitless as the call on the field was quickly ruled correct.
“I knew that it had gone out, but I thought they were challenging something with Mark [Vientos] around second base,” Torrens said of the lead runnner making a baserunning mistake ahead of him.
Torrens, who finished 2-for-4 on the night, is off to a solid start to the season – with three extra-base hits through four games – getting time behind the plate Francisco Alvarez on the shelf.
“I think it starts with the confidence of knowing you’re gonna be in the lineup day in and day out," he said about his solid start at the plate. "And then after that, it’s all the hard work that you have to put in to have that success.”
