Pete Alonso on Mets' 2022 season: 'I feel like we didn’t have as much fun as we should’ve'

Baseball is a grind.

With 162 games played, not only is it physically taxing but mentally draining. With such a long season, it’s crucial to have fun along the way.

For much of the summer, the 2022 Mets did have fun. Yes, it’s always fun when the team is winning and the Mets did a lot of that last season. But it was clear the club had fun playing the game.

Whether it was Tomas Nido making faces at the camera from the dugout, Edwin Diaz entering the game from the bullpen with trumpets, or seemingly everybody on the team messing with manager Buck Showalter, the Mets were having fun.

Then, something happened about halfway through the month of September, according to Pete Alonso.

It could have been the long, arduous season — one in which the Mets played incredible to that point — catching up to them, the pressure of maintaining their season-long, first-place lead over the surging Atlanta Braves, or something else entirely, but it appeared as though the Mets stopped having fun.

“The whole goal is to get to the playoffs after 162 and then capitalize and then obviously compete and win the championship," Alonso told SNY in an interview airing on Wednesday night's episode of Mets Hot Stove. "So for us I feel like going down that road, once we kind of got halfway through September, as a team I feel like we didn’t have as much fun as we should’ve.”

Even from an outsider’s perspective it was apparent that the club lost a little bit of that joy that comes from playing baseball.

And despite not having a single month where they finished below .500, the Mets stumbled towards the end during what was considered the softest part of their schedule, losing their division lead in the final week of the season before ultimately losing to the San Diego Padres in the Wild Card Series.

“We played excellent ball all year long, we were extremely consistent from day one to 162,” Alonso said. “We didn’t, obviously, end it the way we wanted.”

Perhaps part of the reasoning New York lost its spark is because losing to the teams you’re supposed to beat can be incredibly frustrating, especially at the end of a season. But even when things are going bad, it’s important to stop and appreciate the good things.

“Granted, it’s awesome to work hard and you work so hard all year long and you’re finally right there close to the finish line, I feel like we didn’t enjoy it as much as we should’ve because in baseball you never know when you can capture magic,” Alonso said. “And I feel like we had it but we didn’t necessarily fully enjoy the success that we had after a long year because playing the way we did is really hard.”