For a series that doesn’t matter for the standings, there’s going to be an electric atmosphere at CitiField as the Orioles visit the Mets. The Polar Bear is back.
Pete Alonso, the Mets’ all-time home run leader, will face his former club for the first time since signing with the Orioles last winter. Alonso debuted with the Mets in 2019 and was an instant fan favorite, winning NL Rookie of the Year that season to kick off his seven-year stretch as one of the most prolific hitters in franchise history.
He clubbed 34 or more homers in every non-covid season, posted a career .857 OPS, and was a five-time All-Star who twice led the Mets to the postseason. Mets fans have been waiting all year to welcome back Alonso, and he should receive a huge reaction (overwhelmingly positive, I would assume) when he steps to the plate as a visiting player.
I’m sure Pete wishes his return to Queens was coming amidst his team’s late-season surge to the postseason. Instead, his Orioles, while technically better than the Mets, will join them in watching the playoffs from the couch. Still, Alonso, in his first season as an Oriole, has been everything the O’s could’ve hoped for and more. He’s been a leader on and off the field, he’s won over fans with his durability and heart, and his on-field production has been stellar, with 35 homers, a league-leading 100 RBIs, and better-than-advertised defense. He’s a lock to be named the Most Valuable Oriole this week.
Alonso’s departure is still a source of consternation for many Mets fans, part of a failed attempt by the front office over the offseason to shake up the core of a team that disappointed in 2025. The Mets parted ways with a slew of their most-tenured players, including Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil, and Edwin Díaz, all of whom had spent six years or more with the club. They tried to retool by bringing in veterans like Freddy Peralta, Marcus Semien, Devin Williams, and Luke Weaver, along with their splashiest signing, a three-year, $126 million deal for former Blue Jays star Bo Bichette.
Instead of rejuvenating the franchise, the shakeup made the Mets even worse. They’ve essentially been out of contention since April, when they suffered a 12-game losing streak that dropped them to 7-14, and they’ve already topped last season’s loss total with 80. Manager Carlos Mendoza was fired in June. Bichette, Semien, and Williams have struggled, and so did Peralta, who has since been traded away, as has Weaver. Alonso’s replacement at first base, veteran Jorge Polanco, posted a .431 OPS and an astounding negative-1.4 WAR in 37 games before suffering a season-ending injury. For a team with the second highest payroll in baseball at $345 million, it’s been a disastrous season.
The Mets still have star power, led by one of the game’s greatest hitters, Juan Soto, who missed a month with a calf strain but has 25 homers and a .928 OPS. Five-time All-Star shortstop Francisco Lindor is having a mediocre season after suffering a hamate injury in the spring. And the Mets boast some intriguing young talent, including outfielders Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing and right-hander Nolan McLean. The 25-year-old McLean, an Orioles third-round draft pick in 2022, didn’t sign with the club after the O’s balked at the results of his physical. The Mets drafted him the following year and he has a 2.98 ERA in 37 career MLB starts. I’m sure Mike Elias wishes he had made a different decision.
Still, there’s only one player who’s going to be on every fan’s mind for this series, and that’s the Polar Bear. Alonso is sitting on 299 career home runs, and if he can’t hit #300 in Baltimore, the most fitting place for him to do so would be at his longtime home of CitiField, where he’s crushed 123 career dingers. If he does so, expect Mets fans to give him a long and loud standing ovation. He deserves it.
Game 1: Monday, 7:10 PM, MASN
RHP Brandon Young (9-4, 3.71) vs. RHP Jonah Tong (2-1, 4.80)
As I wrote in Bird Droppings, I would go ahead and shut down Young for the season if I were in charge, but nobody listens to me (rightly so, usually). Young’s career-high innings count is up to 140.2 and he has looked fatigued in his last few starts, so there’s little reason to push him any further with the O’s out of contention. Still, the 28-year-old righty has gone above and beyond what any O’s fans expected from him this season, emerging as the savior of the rotation after Zach Eflin’s season-ending injury. The Orioles are 18-7 in Young’s starts and he nearly always pitches well enough to win. Only once in his his 25 starts has he given up more than four earned runs, and that was in his most recent outing, when the Guardians tagged him for six.
The Ontario-born Tong, nicknamed “The Canadian Cannon” according to Baseball Reference, will be making just his second start of the year and seventh of his career. He ranked as the Mets’ #5 prospect last year before graduating from the list. Tong has an unorthodox, over-the-top delivery that has helped him rack up the strikeouts in the minors — a career 12.8 K/9 rate — but he’s not had much success in his brief MLB career, failing to throw a quality start yet. Of course that means he’s going to throw seven shutout innings against the Orioles.
Game 2: Tuesday, 7:10 PM, MASN
RHP Shane Baz (6-15, 4.05) vs. LHP Sean Manaea (5-7, 4.79)
The baseball gods smiled upon Baz last week against Cleveland when he got a win despite giving up five runs. After all the games in which he’s pitched brilliantly but was saddled with a loss or a no-decision because of a lack of run support, he was long overdue for that kind of good fortune. Dare I wonder if the Orioles’ offense can manage to put up two consecutive high-scoring games with Baz on the mound? That’s probably too much to ask, but miracles can happen.
They’ll be facing the veteran lefty Manaea, who began the season in the bullpen but shifted back to his more familiar starting role in mid-June. A former first-round pick of the Royals, Manaea has put together a solid 11-year career, but not recently. He has a 5.06 ERA in his last two seasons, and he’s allowed four runs or more in each of his last five starts. Pete Alonso has one career homer against him, in 2023 when Alonso was on the Mets and Manaea on the Giants, so maybe this will be the night for Pete to hit #300.
Game 3: Wednesday, 7:10 PM, ESPN
RHP Chris Bassitt (7-5, 4.88) vs. RHP Robert Stock (1-3, 5.93)
Bassitt won’t be celebrated at CitiField like Alonso will, but he had a solid (albeit brief) stint with the Mets in 2022, when he went 15-9 with a 3.42 ERA in 30 starts. Of course, he also ended their season by losing the sudden-death Game 3 of the Wild Card Series to the Padres, so maybe he’s not that fondly remembered by Mets fans. He also won’t be fondly remembered by Orioles fans after this year, as an injury-marred, mostly ineffective, $18.5 million roster filler. But somebody’s got to pitch these last few games, so Bassitt might as well be one of them. Bassitt has been hit hard by Lindor, who is 5-for-17 lifetime against him, but he’s held Marcus Semien — who was once involved in the same trade as Bassitt in 2014 — to a 1-for-12 performance.
Robert Stock has had one of the most well-traveled paths of anyone through professional baseball. A second-round pick of the Cardinals in 2009, he shuffled through five different organizations before finally making his MLB debut nine years later, then cycled through four more teams in the next three years before pitching in Korea in 2022, the independent leagues in 2023, and Mexico in 2024, then returning to the majors. The 36-year-old has been released three times, claimed on waivers four times, and signed as a minor league free agent seven times, and he’s currently in his second stint with the Mets. It isn’t going particularly well, as his 5.93 ERA can attest, but you have to admire his never-give-up attitude.
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What do you expect from this series, Camden Chatters? Will Pete hit his 300th home run in front of his longtime fans, or will it wait until he returns to Baltimore this weekend?
