All eyes on Alonso as Mets head into Subway Series

NEW YORK -- It’s been a long time since the Mets came into the Bronx with a young player who might be better than his Yankees counterpart, and even longer since they brought in a guy who even Yankee fans will be curious to see.

But that will be the situation Monday night when Pete Alonso, second in the league in home runs and the morning line favorite to waltz off with NL Rookie of the Year honors, plays in his first Subway Series game at Yankee Stadium.

All eyes will be on the 24-year-old first baseman, who actually is likely to be a DH when Masahiro Tanaka throws the first pitch shortly after 7 p.m.

Mets fans, of course, will want to see if Alonso can perform in what for them and their team has often been the highlight of their season, an otherwise meaningless short series against a team that plays in a different league.

And Yankees fans will want to get a close look at a player some have compared favorably to Aaron Judge, who two years ago exploded onto the local scene with a record 52 home runs as rookie.

Judge, of course, has not played in nearly two months, on the IL with an oblique strain, and if he is around Yankee Stadium at all will be watching in street clothes.

For the next two days, Alonso will be measured against Luke Voit, his Yankee counterpart at first base, who is among his team’s leaders in home runs (15), RBI (39) and OPS (.871).

But Alonso is mature beyond his years and seems to know better than to think that four games against the Yankees -- the Mets will host them for two games at Citi Field in July -- is any sort of barometer on their season, or that two months into a rookie year is in any way comparable to Judge’s 2017.

“I really don’t want to think about that,’’ Alonso said in the Mets clubhouse following their 6-1 win over the Colorado Rockies Sunday afternoon. “That rookie season (Judge) had, that was unreal. I’m really happy that people think of me in that high regard. But I don’t want to compare myself to anyone or put myself in a mold or a box because I just want to continue to evolve and be my own player. Right now, people are saying, he reminds me of Aaron Judge. Hopefully one day people will say of other guys, he’s Peter Alonso-ish. I’m trying to create my own path and be my own style.’’

It’s a wise way to approach an unwise comparison and a relatively unimportant series.

But throughout their 57-year history, it’s always it has always been difficult for the Mets, and their fan base, to shake the Little Brother Syndrome when it comes to the Yankees.

Since their inception in 1962, the Mets have been to the World Series five times and won precisely two World Championships, and none since 1986, when only four players on their current roster -- Robinson Cano, Jason Vargas, Carlos Gomez and Todd Frazier -- had even been born.

Over the same period, the Yankees have been to the playoffs 20 times, won their division 14 times, played in seven World Series and won five of them. And that’s not even counting the 22 times they had won it all before the Mets even existed.

So it’s only natural that, misguided as it may be, the Mets have often seemed to be more concerned with how they matched up against their crosstown rivals than they have been with the teams they truly needed to beat, namely the Atlanta Braves, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Washington Nationals and the Miami Marlins (who incidentally, have as many World Series championship as the Mets in 30 fewer seasons).

No wonder that in many of the past 22 years, the Mets annual Subway Series against the Yankees has been the highlight of their season.

“My rookie year I played in it and we weren’t in playoff contention so that was the closest to playoff atmosphere that we played in,’’ said Dom Smith, who will start at first base in Monday night’s opener of the two-game set at Yankee Stadium. “For me those were some of the biggest games I played in. The energy, the atmosphere, the fans, everything was great. It’s a battle for the city, and we want the Empire State Building to be blue and orange at the end of the night.’’

This year may be more of the same for the Mets. Their win over the Rockies, while an impressive outing for Noah Syndergaard and a rare series win this season over a team with a winning record, left the Mets still a game below .500 and five games behind the Phillies in the NL East.

Meanwhile, the Yankees, with most of their marquee players on the injured list and a daily lineup that often reads like a spring training split-squad game, are 16 games over .500 and sit in a first-place tie with the Tampa Bay Rays atop the AL East.

And over the past two seasons, in head-to-head competition with the Mets, the Yankees have won seven of their last 10 meetings, including sweeping all four games between the two in 2017. Since its inception in 1997, the Yankees have won 32 of the 52 Subway Series games, plus four out of five when they met in a real World Series in 2000.

It’s not easy to be a Mets fan in a Yankees world, which is why the Mets and their fans put so much stock in their occasional victories over their baseball Big Brother.

Mickey Callaway, a relative newcomer to the series -- as a rookie manager, his Mets split six games with the Yankees in 2018, losing two of three at home but taking two of three in the Bronx -- tried on Sunday to downplay the importance of the series.

“It’s an exciting event for the city, it’s exciting for the Mets and I know our fans are going to be supporting us,’’ he said. “Other than that, it’s two more games in a long schedule.’’

Callaway is right, of course. Over the course of a baseball season, two games doesn’t make much of a difference either way. Two wins in the Bronx may not move the needle much, if at all, in the NL East standings, and even with a sweep, the Mets will still be just a game above mediocrity.

And over the course of its 22-year history, dominance by one team over the other in the Subway Series has rarely been an indication of superiority.

The Mets, of course, won the first regular-season game ever played between the two when an otherwise-forgettable lefthander named Dave Mlicki shut out the defending World Champs 6-0 at Yankee Stadium. The Mets wound up 88-74 that year and in third place. The Yankees won 96 games, lost in the LDS, and then ran off three more World Championships.

Likewise, in 2015, the Yankees won four of the six games between the two -- but won just 87 games and their post-season lasted a whisper above three hours as they were shut out by Dallas Keuchel. The Mets, meanwhile, went to the World Series.

So take the two games this week in the Bronx and the two to come in Flushing for what they are: great entertainment, a welcome diversion in what can become a numbingly monotonous schedule, and a chance to get a close look at a team you otherwise would not see except in late October, if at all.

And for the Mets, a chance to win two games at a point in the season in which they barely need them, regardless of who the opponent is.

“We’re playing really good ball right now, so I think we got a really good chance going in there,’’ Alonso said. “It’s going to be a hostile environment but hell, this is what it’s all for. It’s going to be really fun.’’