It took nine years, but we finally know what the New York Mets would have looked like in 2016 if they’d re-signed Daniel Murphy instead of letting their 2015 postseason star walk to the division rival Washington Nationals — where he promptly delivered the season of his life and single-handedly shifted the balance of power in the NL East.
Pete Alonso is doing a pretty good Murphy impression right now — except he’s doing it in a Mets uniform.
Alonso continued his career-best campaign Sunday afternoon by homering twice and driving in four runs as the red-hot Mets routed the Colorado Rockies 13-5 to complete a three-game sweep.
The Mets are 6-2 this month, a stretch that’s opened up a 4 1/2-game lead over the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East while boosting their division title odds to 94.6 percent, according to Baseball-Reference.
The surge has been sparked by Alonso, who is hitting a video game-like .382 with six homers and 18 RBIs since June 1. His two homers Sunday vaulted him past David Wright into second place on the franchise’s all-time home run list — now just nine behind Darryl Strawberry.
Overall, Alonso is batting .301 — 52 points higher than his career average entering the season — with 20 doubles, just 11 shy of the career high he set last year. He’s on pace for a team-record 49 doubles as well as 150 RBIs, which would shatter his franchise single-season record of 131 set in 2022.
Alonso’s age-30 career season, coming on the heels of an iconic postseason performance, is unfolding much like Murphy’s 2016 breakout at age 31.
Alonso blasted one of the most memorable homers in team history to stave off elimination in Game 3 of the wild-card series against the Milwaukee Brewers and finished the playoffs with four homers, 10 RBIs and a .999 OPS.
For much of the winter, it looked like those would be his final acts in a Mets uniform. Alonso remained unsigned until the eve of spring training, when he agreed to a two-year, $54 million deal with an opt-out after this season (spoiler alert: he’s going to use it).
But at least the Mets made sure to bring him back. Murphy only received a qualifying offer after his brilliant 2015 postseason, when he showed early signs of becoming a complete hitter by going deep in six straight playoff games and finishing with seven homers, 11 RBIs and a 1.115 OPS.
Murphy hit .288 during his regular-season Mets career and topped 30 doubles five times in six full seasons, but never hit more than 14 homers in a year. After signing with the Nationals in January, Murphy exploded for an NL-leading .347 average, 47 doubles, a .985 OPS, 25 homers and 104 RBIs.
Washington, which missed the playoffs in 2015, won the division by eight games over the wild-card Mets as Murphy finished second in NL MVP voting behind the Cubs’ Kris Bryant. In 2019, former general manager Sandy Alderson admitted the team should have re-signed Murphy.
With no clear-cut NL MVP front-runner and the Mets holding the biggest division lead in the National League, Alonso has a legitimate shot at becoming the first MVP in franchise history. Just what he needs — a little extra leverage heading into another potential contract standoff with president of baseball operations David Stearns after a season that’s shown the Mets exactly what life without him might look like.
