Pete Alonso Wins The Home Run Derby
It wasn’t easy with his cousin Derek Morgan throwing wild pitches and buzzing him in a few times, but Pete Alonso won the 2019 Home Run Derby. Alonso joins Darryl Strawberry (1986) as the only other Met to win a Home Run Derby.
TAKE. IT. HOME. #HomeRunDerby ? pic.twitter.com/Sr5WenLWG7
— New York Mets (@Mets) July 9, 2019
Alonso needed surges to beat Carlos Santana and Ronald Acuna, Jr. in the first two rounds setting the stage for a final against Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. Guerrero was the story for much of the night after his breaking single round records and needing a third swing-off to finally beat Joc Pederson. Still, it would be Alonso who won with the Guerrero’s handling it with pure class.
What a show❗️
Congratulations Pete, great performance.
— Vladimir Guerrero (@VladGuerrero27) July 9, 2019
This Home Run Derby was great for baseball. It featured an epic Guerrero/Peterson matchup and some of the best young talent in the game. In the end, Alonso, who never needed his bonus time in any of the three rounds was the winner.
Tonight was the night Guerrero and Alonso were launched to stardom across baseball. With a big All Star Game tomorrow, Alonso could be considering a burgeoning superstar. That’s what happens to players who kill the ball and donate a portion of their winnings to charity.
With Alonso winning, the joke was this was the Mets World Series. For what it’s worth, when Strawberry won it, the Mets won the World Series. For that matter, when David Wright went to the finals in 2006, the Mets went to the NLCS.
On a night like tonight, Mets fans had reason to cheer and to believe anything is possible. For tonight, we get to celebrate and dream. Mostly, we get to appreciate the fact Alonso is a Met.
This was great…. too bad deGrom was at the hotel for Kershaw and Bellinger were all there for Joc…..
Let us focus on two fronts…. pressuring the Wilpons to sell
Or
Realignment in baseball…. or Get out of the division with the Braves or the 2020s will only be about playing 162 games plus spring training, Grapefruit League JUST for a one game wildcard …. for there is no way they can win the division in the coming years!
NO WAY!!!
Even look at the Atlanta AAA AA teams…..
Like the USA vs Iceland
IT AINT WORTH ROUTING FOR THE METS WITH THIS OWNERSHIP
Nothing we can do to force the Wilpons to sell.
“On a night like tonight, Mets fans had reason to cheer and to believe anything is possible.”
—Well intended, I’m sure, but that’s not something I’m likely to believe with the team’s current ownership. Baseball’s an interesting game, a version of ballet. The Mets are the primary lens through which I enjoy the game thanks to family ties but I have zero faith the Mets will accomplish anything meaningful with the Wilpons dragging the team down and costing the roster something like 5 to 10 games each year versus its true talent level through their mismanagement of injuries, choice of subpar managers, choice of subpar GMs, their constant meddling, inability to build a top-notch farm system, inability to accumulate replacement level talent in AAA and AA so that the club doesn’t have to play Lagares and Broxton and debit the team -2.0 bWAR from CF, alone…
On and on.
The primary interesting facets of the 2019 squad are the individual stories and players–can Alonso continue his amazing hitting? (and how does a 24 yo kick up his slugging a substantial notch after moving to the majors?) Can McNeil win a batting title? Will Ramos survive his brutal playing regimen? Why do relievers bomb so noticeably upon moving to the Mets MLB team? And, of course, the soap opera. I’d rather have a winning team, but the annual autopsy on the Mets is genuinely interesting, requiring those so inclined to dig into this chronic failure to some depth to figure it out.
I’ll credit ownership with one thing–it’s finding new ways to fail. The maltreatment of injuries is always the same, but when the most inept pair of owners in in the game look to an agent to succeed when that has never worked in baseball, well, at least it was different.
We can dream, but in reality, it isn’t happening.