You hope the Mets and Pete Alonso can work something out between now and pitchers and catchers reporting so that Pete, still a free agent, can stay right where he is.

I think Mets owner Steve Cohen and David Stearns, his president of baseball operations, do want the Polar Bear to stay right where he is. And, without having spoken to Pete Alonso since last season, I believe he wants to remain a Met. But that doesn¡¯t mean he will. It¡¯s not just him on his side of this particular negotiation, it¡¯s also his agent Scott Boras, about whom you may have heard.

¡°I¡¯d love the idea of spending the rest of my career with the Mets,¡± Alonso said last season, ¡°because it¡¯s a special place.¡±

Alonso made that comment at the end of August. Now, we are at the beginning of a new year and, if anything, the Mets have become even more of a special landing place for him over the past four months -- and by landing space I mean first base, Citi Field -- because of the way their season ended, in the NLCS against the Dodgers and because Cohen and Stearns just signed Juan Soto away from the Yankees on a record-setting contract.

An even more special place for Alonso, if he does return to the only team for which he¡¯s ever played, will be up there at the top of Carlos Mendoza¡¯s batting order, hitting behind Francisco Lindor and Soto and Brandon Nimmo. It might not be the top of the Dodgers¡¯ batting order with Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman, and Teoscar Hern¨¢ndez coming up behind them. But it would do just fine on the Mets¡¯ side of New York.

So now Mets fans and all baseball fans wait to see how this will all come out and, at least in this case, emotion will be a part of the final decision for both sides, and Alonso really will become a great Met -- and he has been a great Met -- who stays instead of goes. Maybe, even in the world of modern sports and as romantic an idea as this is with the money involved these days, both Cohen and Alonso, the two who will make the ultimate decision about the money, both listen to their hearts on this one.

Again: I don¡¯t think Cohen, a lifelong Mets fan, wants Alonso to leave and I believe the same thing about the Polar Bear, on his way to being the most prolific home run hitter the organization has ever produced, and one of the most popular players the Mets have had, certainly lately.

We all hear all the analytical reasons why the Mets are reluctant to offer Alonso, a right-handed hitting first baseman who just turned 30 last month, a long-term contract. It¡¯s reached the point where there is as much of a sketchy narrative from the numbers crunchers about that as there is about running backs in the National Football League which, by the way, is a narrative Saquon Barkley just ran through and around and even jumped over for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Without question, the Mets have the perfect right to make as close to the perfect deal for themselves as they can. And Alonso, in his first shot at free agency, is going to do the same thing, as he decides what¡¯s best for him as he looks at the next five years of his career, or maybe more.

Did Alonso¡¯s offensive numbers dip last season? They did. So, an off year for him became 34 home runs and 88 RBIs and a .240 batting average, sub-standard numbers for him across the board. But here are some other numbers to consider about him, as a way of giving you the complete picture about who he is and what he has brought to the Mets since he hit the big leagues in 2019 and promptly broke Aaron Judge¡¯s rookie record for home runs with 53.

In his six years with the Mets, Alonso has hit 226 regular-season home runs. Across town, Judge hit 232 for the Yankees in that same span. Does a lot of that have to do with the fact that there have been seasons when Judge has missed a lot of games? It does. Only that is something else to consider when considering the true value of Alonso. In the current vernacular of baseball, he ¡°posts up,¡± game after game and season after season. In his entire career, one that included as big a postseason home run as any Met has ever hit -- a three-run shot off Devin Williams in the ninth inning of Game 3 in the Mets-Brewers 2024 NL Wild Card Series -- Alonso has missed a grand total of 23 games. In six years. And that ain¡¯t nothing.

Everybody knows about star Mets and popular Mets who have left. Tom Seaver, the greatest Met of them all, did. Nolan Ryan left and so did Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden. David Wright was a great Met who did stay, but saw his career -- one that will be honored at Citi Field this season when his No. 5 is retired -- shortened by injury. Some of them got traded. Some left on their own. No one knows how this will come out with Pete Alonso. But you hope he stays.