The yearly funk for the Mets’ best power hitter

Everyone I know, everywhere I go
People need some reason to believe

The Mets haven’t given us many reasons to believe, leaving many to be running on empty right about now. It seems like the Mets themselves have their fuel gauge hugging the “E,” too. The list is long and familiar to all of us. But one person has somehow escaped blame from the masses. And that’s Pete Alonso, who has a .606 OPS in his last 21 games.

It’s good to have things you can count on in this world. And one of those is that Alonso will have a span of around 80 PA where he’s hitting for neither AVG nor power. Here’s a year-by-year list of those times for Alonso:

2019: 7/12-8/1 – 82 PA, .125/.305/.313
2020: 7/24-8/11 – 79 PA, .197/.329/.303
2021: 5/5-6/6 – 78 PA, .197/.308/.303
2022: 8/15-9/6 – 87 PA, .175/.241/.300
2023: 4/22-5/15 – 86 PA, .164/.291/.315

It’s hardly groundbreaking to note that a player goes through a stretch where things aren’t going his way. However, it’s impressive to me how Alonso has been so consistent in this regard. It’s a bit surprising how early his bad streak has come this year. Also noteworthy is it comes right on the heels of an outstanding stretch to open ’23, one where it looked like he was going to be an MVP candidate.

Here’s the Mets’ record in those poor stretches for Alonso:

2019: 13-5
2020: 7-11
2021: 18-11
2022: 10-11
2023: 6-15

The Mets’ record has been all over the map when Alonso gets in one of his yearly funks, with this year being easily the worst of the bunch. Still, they’ve been under .500 in three of the five years and played extremely well in ’19 and ’21.

Let’s hope that Alonso busts out of his cold spell on this 6-game homestand.