Laura Albanese

He did not even give them the opportunity to give a counter offer, which means he left money on the table.

Most likely that's indicative of, I kind of just don't want to be there and, or the biggest Edwin Diaz thing.

He wants to win a ring and he,

it is possible he no longer believed in the vision of the Mets building a sustainable winner or a winner in the short term.

It doesn't pass the test.

Yeah, it doesn't pass the sniff test, right?

If you're like, you know, you do it in like normal people money and you're just like, okay, the difference between making $100,000 a year and $110,000 a year, but you have to uproot your entire family and your entire livelihood.

Suddenly you're like...

that's not so easy of a choice.

Maybe I can just ask my old boss for a raise.

seems like didn't really even kind of try kind of gives you the same vibe of like ah do they really want me am i am i looking at it kind of the same way yeah no and i think it was really telling i remember it was game 162 they had just gotten eliminated and he asked pete alonso is he going to opt out and immediately he's like yes like this is this was and obviously everyone knew he was going to you know exercise his player option and he was i mean not exercise player option he was going to

test-free agency again.

So that wasn't a surprise.

But in the aftermath, the immediate comments were, you know, I love my time being as a Met.

I hope they appreciated me as much.

When guys say things like that, and you can tell it was coming from the heart, I think there was a wound there from last season where he didn't feel like he was appreciated for what he did for the franchise.

And I think he came back partially because he thought they had a chance of winning the World Series and partially because he wanted to eclipse Daryl Strawberry's home run record.

but he just didn't feel like the Mets wanted him.

And then the other big takeaway from his press conference, his introductory press conference with the Orioles, was him saying, well, the Orioles gave me the blueprint, and I thought that was so refreshing.

So I've covered Pete Alonzo for many years.