The New York Mets have never had a player quite like Pete Alonso.

They’ve had great home-run hitters like Frank Thomas (34 homers in ’62), Dave Kingman (37 in ’76 and ’82) and Todd Hundley (41 in ’96). They’ve had great all-around hitters who hit home runs like Darryl Strawberry and Mike Piazza and Carlos Beltrán. But no Met in the franchise’s history has pummeled the ball so routinely and so consistently as Alonso.

Alonso’s next home run will surpass Strawberry and set a franchise record with 253. He’ll do so in almost 150 fewer games and about 400 fewer plate appearances than Strawberry — just about a season quicker. Since he debuted in 2019, Alonso has hit more home runs than every player except Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber, the latter of whom has him by a single long ball.

“I don’t even think it’s just for the Mets. I think it’s pretty special what he is doing in general, the consistency of his power,” said Brandon Nimmo, who’s been Alonso’s teammate for all 252 of his career homers. “If he played in a park that was even more favorable, he would probably have more than Judge, honestly. If he played in a park that was even more favorable in April and May and September, he might be that 50-home run guy every year. It really is incredible what he has done.”

(For what it’s worth, Baseball Savant suggests Alonso would have hit fewer home runs at Yankee Stadium than he has at Citi Field. Put him in Cincinnati, however, and he’d be closing in on 300.)

It’s not just how many home runs Alonso has hit, but also when he has hit them.

“A lot of his home runs have come in situations where he’s flipped the momentum to get it on our side, and you see everybody else feed off of it,” starter David Peterson said. “You can put Pete in any lineup and he’s probably the guy they circle and say, ‘This guy’s not beating us.’”

Nimmo is one of just a handful of people who have been with the Mets since Alonso debuted. Peterson came one year later in 2020. We asked as many longtime Mets as we could about Alonso’s power — about the home runs that stood out, that opened their eyes, or, to steal from Nimmo, gave them “that sense of awe.”

“He’s hit 250 or whatever,” Edwin Díaz said, “so to be there for the first … ”

The first home run of Alonso’s career was, like quite a few of the memorable ones he hit early in that rookie season, a fly ball to center on which an initially engaged center fielder stops jogging after three steps to watch it land off the batter’s eye or in a second deck or in a water feature. This one traveled 440 feet, and it’s the one that immediately comes to Díaz’s mind.

Díaz debuted with the Mets the same day as Alonso that April. (Only Nimmo, Jeff McNeil and Drew Smith have been with the major-league club longer.) The nature of his first spring training with the Mets had kept Díaz from paying too much attention to what Alonso could do with the bat. So when he saw it like that, in Miami?

“Special,” he said.

After the Mets finished off the win, Alonso hopped into a shopping cart for a celebration. He was wheeled into the shower and …

“They just poured whatever the hell they could on me,” he said that night.

By the middle of that first April, Alonso had already justified the Mets’ relatively unorthodox decision to carry him on their Opening Day roster, service time considerations be damned. In the 11 games they could have kept him in the minors to secure an additional year of service, Alonso hit five homers and posted an OPS above 1.300. His sixth homer, in Game No. 12, still sticks with people.

“The one that really stood out to me was his first one in Atlanta,” Nimmo said.

Standing on first base, Nimmo went through his thought process for how aggressive to be on the bases. On a fly ball to the outfield, he had to make sure it got over the outfielder’s head to throw it into second gear and try to score. So when Alonso hit a low laser to center …

“I am in my head hoping this gets over his head,” Nimmo said. “But I am also thinking, ‘Dang, he hit that really well and it’s probably going to be caught.’

“And all of a sudden, I get close to second base, and pick it up again, and it is about to go into the fountain in center field. I just saw it splash as I was getting to second base. You have all these reads that are from normal, big-league exit velos and whatnot. And that read did not register with what he was doing at all.”

“That was my first experience of, ‘OK, Pete has a different kind of power,’” Nimmo said. “I always look back on that one because that was my first time getting that sense of awe.”

Or, as play-by-play broadcaster Gary Cohen put it, “That was the one that opened your eyes that this guy is legit.”

For one longtime Mets employee, that epiphany had come earlier, and it hadn’t even come in person.

“This one is probably not common as far as being on anyone’s list of favorite Pete Alonso home runs. But I think about the one he hit in the Futures Game all the time,” bullpen catcher Dave Racaniello said.

Alonso’s appearance in the 2018 Futures Game came amid a breakout season. Before 2018, he was a fringe top-five prospect in the organization, typically listed behind pitcher Justin Dunn and catcher Tomás Nido by reputable analysts. And then Alonso went out and hit 36 homers between two levels and made himself a glaring dot on the big-league radar.

In the Futures Game at Nationals Park, Alonso’s towering shot off future teammate Adonis Medina showed all he was capable of.

“We go to Washington a lot and spend so much time in that bullpen. So, where he hit that ball — if you’ve ever spent time in or around that bullpen, you know that is a long, long way. You don’t see many balls land there,” Racaniello said. “I didn’t know much about Pete at that time. But I remember seeing where that ball landed, knowing how far it is, knowing I hadn’t seen many guys outside of batting practice hit a ball that far, seeing the amount of power that he has, that made a lasting impression on me.”

“The one for me is the one in Minnesota,” said Cohen, who’s been the play-by-play broadcaster for nearly all of Alonso’s homers. “He hit it near the top of the upper deck. That stands out to me as the most impressive home run.”

The 474-foot blast off Minnesota’s Matt Megill came in July of Alonso’s rookie year. By that point, Cohen had already realized Alonso’s power was different in team history. As with Nimmo on the bases, it had altered the way he prepared for balls off the bat.

“You’re always prepared for anything,” he said, “but there’s a different standard for how you prepare for a guy who is capable of hitting the ball 450 feet.”

There’s a certain playoff home run we’ll get to, but Drew Smith wants to mention a different one.

“The one he hit off Flaherty in the NLCS to dead center looked like a two-iron,” Smith said, echoing a comparison several Mets have made about Alonso home runs. “The slider was maybe a foot off the ground, too — a good pitch, and he made it look like a mistake pitch. Crazy power.”

“For the rest of us mortals, we fly out (on a pitch that low),” Nimmo said after the game that night. “But for him, it’s just an absolute bomb. Just normal Pete.”

This is one Alonso appreciated as well, coming as it did in front of a raucous crowd in Queens.

“It’s storybook-type stuff,” he said that night. “When you grow up as a kid, you dream about that type of stuff.”

“I hate to sound like I’m dismissing everything else,” longtime radio broadcaster Howie Rose said, “but the one in Milwaukee defines a career. It just overpowers anything else I can think of.”

Indeed, Alonso’s series-winning, season-saving home run in Game 3 of last year’s Wild Card Series was the given for this list — the one nearly every person we talked to mentioned immediately.

It wasn’t just that Alonso saved the Mets’ season; he helped transform his legacy with the franchise. Up until that point, Alonso’s 2024 had been disappointing. His numbers were below his career standards, and he’d especially struggled in big moments — a stark change from every other year in his career. And so, the range of possibilities for that at-bat was tremendous.

“I remember the preamble to the at-bat in Milwaukee, just building everything around the narrative that this could be his last plate appearance, right?” Rose said.

“Let’s face it: If he hits into a double play against Devin Williams to end the season, he’s probably not here now,” Gary Cohen said. “The entire perception of Pete changed with that one swing.”

“It was almost written perfectly for him,” co-hitting coach Eric Chavez said.

Rather than guessing what pitch Williams would throw him, Alonso focused on a lane on the outer half of the plate. Both Williams’ fastball and changeup moved back toward Alonso; if a ball started near the outside corner, it would finish near the middle of the plate. Williams’ 3-1 changeup was right where Alonso was looking, and he smashed it to right field.

“I blacked out. Everything happens fast; it’s such a blur. Those moments are so fleeting,” Alonso said this spring. “It was just pure euphoria.”

“That’s No. 1,” Peterson said.

“I still get chills watching the video,” Smith said. “But I’m sure No. 253 will have to be added to my list when it happens.”

— The Athletic’s Will Sammon contributed to this report.

(Photo of Pete Alonso’s homer in Game 3 of the 2024 Wild Card Series: Aaron Gash / MLB Photos via Getty Images)