Pete Alonso is still a Met. And this one is as much about Mets fans as it is about their baseball team. Sometimes it¡¯s a good thing when the owner is a fan, too.

At the end of a long, hard winter of negotiation between the Mets and Alonso¡¯s agent, Scott Boras, and with Spring Training about to begin, Alonso doesn¡¯t walk away from the Mets, and the Mets don¡¯t let him do that. And maybe, just maybe, Mets fans have a right to feel that they had a hand in closing this deal along with everybody else involved.

This was a baseball decision, for sure, and a financial determination made by Steve Cohen, the owner, and David Stearns, who runs baseball operations for him. But there can be no doubt that they heard their fans on this one, loud and clear.

It is reported now that Alonso -- who reportedly turned down a 7-year and $158 offer from the Mets during the 2023 season when someone else was still his agent -- got a two-year deal that will pay him $30 million for the ¡¯25 season, with an opt-out after that. So Alonso stays in the Mets' batting order, and gets the chance to hit behind not just Francisco Lindor for manager Carlos Mendoza, but behind Juan Soto, on whom Cohen just lavished the biggest free-agent contract, worth $765 million, in baseball history.

In the process, Alonso gets the opportunity, with a Mets team built to win right now and perhaps make it back to the World Series for the first time in 10 years, to prove that he is worth a longer and more lucrative deal with the Mets, or someone else. In the process, Mets fans got exactly what they want, which is Alonso at first base at Citi Field.

Here are some things Cohen said not long ago about this negotiation:

"I don't like the negotiations. I don't like what's been presented to us." He also said this: "As we continue to bring in players, reality is [it] becomes harder to fit in Pete to what is a very expensive group of players that we already have.¡±

Cohen and Stearns are aware, as everyone is, about the reluctance from executives all over the sport to lavish high-end free-agent deals to right-handed-hitting first basemen past their 30th birthday (and Alonso just turned 30 in December). They also understand the analytical realities of that, and even of his budget, especially after having just spent what they¡¯d spent on Soto, who of course is one of the game¡¯s dream analytical stars.

It happens to be a fact that Alonso¡¯s home run total was just 34 last season, the lowest for him in a full season since he hit the big leagues in 2019 and proceeded to break the all-time rookie home run record by hitting 53 for the Mets a year after Aaron Judge had hit 52 as a rookie for the Yankees.

• 3 reasons Alonso can be a 40-homer hitter again

But there was another powerful and immutable fact at play here: Alonso had saved the Mets season last October, when they were about to lose that season to the Brewers, in Game 3 of the Mets-Brewers Wild Card Series. They were losing in the ninth inning and the Brewers¡¯ star closer Devin Williams (now a Yankee) was on the mound, and then Alonso hit one of the most dramatic postseason home runs in Mets history over the right-field wall. With one swing, the Mets were ahead of the Brewers and no longer behind, on their way to a Division Series against the Phillies they would win before losing to the Dodgers in six games in the National League Championship Series.

In the end, the Mets could not let go of that, or let go of Alonso, one of the most popular players the Mets have had in a long time, and someone who has been the face of his franchise every bit as much as Lindor became one after Cohen bought the team, and long before Soto came across town from the Bronx.

Are the Mets better with Alonso back at first base than without him? Absolutely they are, even if his batting average went down last season -- to .240 -- the way home runs did. They now have the switch-hitting Lindor coming off a season when only Shohei Ohtani was more valuable in the National League and they have the left-handed-hitting Soto, and a lot more than that as they try to make a run at the Phillies and Braves in the NL East and, they hope, at the Dodgers.

But more than that, and even more than the short-term money involved, Cohen and Stearns give the fans what they want, and what Mets fans clearly let both of them hear, across this long baseball winter for Alonso, is that they wanted the guy known as the Polar Bear to remain at Citi Field. If they were going to make another big run this season, they wanted to make it with Pete Alonso, the guy who saved last season.

A lot of very good things have happened with the Mets since Game 6 against the Dodgers, starting with Soto. This is another. Too often fans, in all sports, feel as if no one is listening to them. Not this time.