It’s cool that we can quantify how important a single swing is to a player, a team, a game and a potential trophy — especially with a moment as crazy as Pete Alonso’s in Thursday’s Wild Card game against the Brewers.

Alonso drove a 3-1 outside change at 110 mph to right field, narrowly clearing a protruding wall at American Family Field. When the ball landed 370 feet from home plate, it would have left the field in only 13 of the 30 parks, including Citi Field. It was his shortest home run in 2024. But still! A home run is a home run – and sometimes even more.

How much more? Let’s look at the numbers.

By win probability added (+63.9% WPA per Baseball Reference), this was Alonso’s biggest game of 2024 and the second biggest of his career. At the game level, his only bigger hit was a 10th inning walk-off home run (+78.3% WPA) against the Tampa Bay Rays on May 17, 2023.

And while walk-off home runs are always cool, baseball history is rarely written in May. So let’s look at it at a seasonal level.

The Mets only recorded three bigger WPA hits in 2024. Two were walk-off home runs: JD Martinez against the Miami Marlins on June 13 (72.4% WPA) and Brandon Nimmo against the Atlanta Braves on May 12. The other was Francisco Lindor’s. booted a home run in the ninth inning of Monday’s playoff game against the Braves (+64.5% WPA) – and even then it was barely bigger than Alonso’s home run by that metric.

But Lindor’s home run didn’t come in the playoffs, while Alonso’s did. So let’s see where it stacks up among other postseason magic.

Adding in the championship win probability (+7.99% cWPA), Alonso’s home run was the biggest play for the franchise since the birth of many Mets fans (myself included). Gary Carter’s go-ahead double in the ninth inning of the 1988 NLCS against the Dodgers (+11.28% cWPA) is the most recent to eclipse Alonso’s home run, but that came in a series the Mets ultimately lost.

When looking at pivotal plays in series wins, next would be Keith Hernandez’s sixth-inning RBI single in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series, which at cWPA% (22.38%) was the most pivotal hit in history from Mets.

If we only look at home runs, the list is not very long:

• Ray Knight: Seventh inning home run in Game 7 of the ’86 World Series (+21.58% cWPA).
• Lenny Dykstra: Walk-off home run in Game 3 of the 1986 NLCS (+13.79% cWPA).
• Alonso: Go-ahead home run in the ninth inning in the 2024 Wild Card Series.

What is particularly remarkable about this historical context is that this is a play that usually takes place to the Mets.

In their history, the Mets have been involved in fourteen home runs that produced a cWPA at least as high as Alonso’s on Thursday. Of those 14 home runs, a whopping 11 have come from the opposing team, many of which resulted in some of the biggest heartbreaks in team history (Reggie Jackson, Kirk Gibson, Yadier Molina, Alex Gordon – we’re not going to get it). here in details).

And that’s just a small part of the context that made Alonso’s home run so remarkable. We can go into his contract year, his slump, Devin Williams, the recent futility of this Milwaukee team, the patchwork of pitching, “OMG,” Grimace, a first-year manager… everything!

But by the numbers alone, Alonso’s moment already ranks as one of the greatest in franchise history.