For Alonso, BP session vs. Syndergaard a chance for growth

PORT ST. LUCIE — You first noticed the impending heavyweight bout not on a ballpark’s marquee, but rather among the minutiae of the daily workout itinerary Wednesday morning, here at First Data Field:

At 11:40 in the morning, at this complex’s Field 6, Noah Syndergaard would throw live batting practice to a group of four hitters.

One of those hitters would be Peter Alonso.

Did anyone think to alert Statcast?

Allow me to give away the ending: No homers and one swing and miss in 10 pitches from Syndergaard, the veteran god of velocity, to Alonso, the rookie master of the exit velocity/launch angle exacta. Those hoping for fireworks suffered a letdown. Just as the cliché informs us, pitchers typically rank ahead of hitters at this point on the calendar.

Yet maybe this inaugural clash of the titans can reap dividends down the line. As the Mets dream it, perhaps Alsonso will go deep off Max Scherzer in a crucial NL East game, or crank one against Luis Severino in a high-profile Subway Series contest, and flash back to this low-key showdown.

“It’s good to see the best,” Alonso said afterwards. “We’ve got a hell of a pitching staff. I think it’s going to help even more in preparation, facing our guys. That’s going to be really awesome.”

He faced reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom earlier this week, so Wednesday didn’t quite rank as a baptism for Alonso. Still, though, the optics of this matchup were irresistible. Syndergaard averaged 97.4 mph with his fastball last year, per

FanGraphs, the second-highest in baseball (after Severino at 97.6 mph) among those who pitched at least 150 innings.

And for someone who hopes to make his major league debut this season, Alonso has made quite the impact already. In July’s Futures Game at Nationals Park, he crushed a 415-foot homer off Phillies prospect Adonis Medina that registered 113.6 mph in exit velocity and 46 degrees in launch angle. Then, in the Arizona Fall League’s Fall Star Game in November, he connected on a 103-mph fastball from Blue Jays prospect Nate Pearson and sent it over the center-field wall.

So what did we get? Alonso led off his four-man hitting group by looking at the first three pitches Syndergaard threw, a fastball and two sliders. He lofted what would have been a flyout to right field and knocked a likely groundout to shortstop to conclude his first turn.

In his second-go round, Alonso fouled one behind him, knocked a grounder up the middle for a potential base hit, swung and missed, tapped another grounder up the middle and looked at a low breaking pitch.

“He looked really sharp today,” Alonso sa i d of Syndergaard. “Obviously he’s got a firm fast- ball. His slider was moving good today.”

Asked if he had ever faced a pitcher taller than the 6-foot-6 Syndergaard, he said, “A.J. Puk is pretty tall,” referring to the A’s prospect. “Puk is 6-7, Puk is pretty much like a tree. He’s a giant out there. I’ve faced some pretty tall dudes.”

He’ll face plenty more, with plenty of velocity, in order to secure and then retain the Mets’ starting first-base job. New general manager Brodie Van Wagenen has repeatedly stated that Alonso will be the Opening Day starter if he wins the gig through positive Grapefruit League results. This runs counter to the industry-wide trend of manipulating players’ service time. If Alonso spends the first two-plus weeks in the minor leagues, the Mets can push back his free agency to the 2025-26 offseason, rather than the previous one.

The stakes are high this spring for Alonso. Considerably less so for Syndergaard, who said of his live BP session, “I’m just getting my work in. I didn’t even know who was in there, to be honest.”

It’s on Alonso to establish himself in Syndergaard’s memory as an ally, rather than a forgettable intrasquad adversary.