Pete Alonso headed to Baltimore Orioles after Mets don't make offer, sources say
Pete Alonso of the New York Mets runs the bases after his first inning home run against the San Diego Padres at Citi Field on Sept. 18, 2025. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The Polar Bear era in Flushing has gone extinct.
After swift negotiations, Pete Alonso is finalizing a deal with the Orioles for five years and $155 million, according to a source. Alonso met with the team during the winter meetings in Orlando this week. The $31 million average annual value of his contract makes him the highest-paid first baseman in baseball.
A source confirmed the Mets did not make an offer to Alonso as they believed the market for him was exceeding their own parameters for a deal.
The move comes one day after Edwin Diaz opted to sign with the Dodgers over the Mets.
“I think this is something where Pete’s really a true free agent,” agent Scott Boras said Tuesday prior to the deal. “Right-handed power is a commodity. A guy who can play on the dirt is a commodity. All the teams we met with, not one doesn’t want Pete to play first base because of his digs and what he does. There’s a lot said of his defense but we’re learning it’s very positive because they don’t have many first baseman who can play every day in the field and carry the offensive thrust of it.”
Alonso, the homegrown Met who eclipsed Darryl Strawberry’s franchise home run record and now has 264 homers over seven seasons, led the team with 126 RBIs last season and hit 38 home runs, second only to Juan Soto. He played all 162 games, including 160 at first base. One of the most prolific power hitters in franchise history, he’s in the top 10 in WAR, slugging percentage, runs, total bases, RBIs and extra-base hits.
But though Alonso and president of baseball operations David Stearns have said repeatedly that they hoped to come to a resolution, it sometimes seemed unlikely. Alonso was up for free agency the first time last year and appeared primed to depart before taking a team-friendly two-year deal worth $54 million with a second-year player option that he chose to exercise.
After the end of this past season, Alonso immediately indicated that he would exercise that option and implied that he would not bend the way he did last season.
“I loved being a Met,” he said. “Hopefully, they appreciated me.”
Going into this offseason, he and Boras made no secret of the fact that they were looking for a longer contract – something Alonso was in good position to receive thanks to a better offensive year, a weak first-base free agent class, and no longer having the qualifying offer attached to his name. Stearns, meanwhile, preached a dedication to “run prevention,” which, at least in part, meant a better defensive team – a weak area of Alonso’s game.
That said, “Pete is a great Met,” Stearns said in his end-of-year post-mortem. “He had a fantastic year – I said this last year and it worked out – I’d love to have Pete back and we’ll see where the offseason goes.”
Later, at the November general managers’ meetings, Stearns added that Alonso’s willingness to occasionally slot in as a designated hitter made him more attractive. Boras added that he had met with both Stearns and owner Steve Cohen and “they’re just really, really excited about the year that Pete had.”
Stearns said the Mets were still interested in a reunion as late as Monday afternoon.
“I think we’ve been pretty clear throughout the process that we’d love to have Pete back,” he said. “We certainly made that clear to his agent right at the start of free agency. We also respect, just as we respected last year, that this is a process and Pete has earned the right to go through the free-agent process, to evaluate the market and we’ll see where that leaves us.”
Newsday's David Lennon contributed to this story.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
