Pete Alonso had already been the National League Rookie of the Year and a foundational piece of the Mets’ future when, in the fall of 2020, hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen purchased the Mets and instantly changed the club’s fortunes.

The roster additions began almost immediately. The changes were pretty much everywhere. And basically everything he experienced in the ensuing five years is a series of events he’s joining in progress as the Orioles’ marquee free agent signing — an acquisition that comes in the second offseason after private equity billionaire David Rubenstein and a team including private credit investor Michael Arougheti took over the club from the Angelos family in 2024.

Both stories started similarly — with late-season collapses in the first year of ownership. The Mets made a change in leadership after theirs and turned things around under Buck Showalter, while it took the Orioles’ 2025 tailspin to get a new manager here. The parallels also end with the fact that this Orioles ownership group gave Alonso a massive free agent deal, and the Mets did not.

But unlike many in Sarasota right now — both the players he shares a clubhouse with and the executives on the floor above them — Alonso has perspective: He has experience trying to build a lasting winner. He understands where it can go wrong, and what ultimately matters to winning.

“The biggest thing is the commitment to talent, and I think that you’ve got to have talent to win ballgames,” he said.

“This is the highest level, and Mr. Rubenstein’s commitment to retaining talent, whether it’s getting free agents, acquiring it in trades, or retaining high-quality talent within the organization, is really, really special,” Alonso said, noting that the spring training facility improvements can allow that talent to flourish. He said the commitment he sees here is special. But then he went a step further.

“For me, it’s not just the talent,” he said. “You have to have the right group of guys.”

Both the early-decade Mets and these mid-decade Orioles have tried to add talent in waves using the new resources of ambitious owners — and have not necessarily had success.

In Cohen’s first offseason, the Mets traded for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco, signed James McCann and pitchers Taijuan Walker and Trevor May plus a host of depth pieces. They added at the deadline, too, only to fall apart down the stretch.

The Orioles’ first offseason under Rubenstein saw the club continue to add payroll after its 2024 trade deadline splurge, signing Tyler O’Neill, Gary Sánchez, Tomoyuki Sugano, Charlie Morton, Andrew Kittredge, Ramón Laureano, and Kyle Gibson to major league deals.

Only O’Neill’s was for longer than a year, but combined with what they added at the preceding trade deadline, the club’s payroll was $100 million higher than where it started when Rubenstein bought the team by last opening day. Still, it went badly.

The Mets aimed a bit higher in their next offseason, and also had a manager change to help spur things along. They signed hitters Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and Eduardo Escobar plus Cy Young winner Max Scherzer, before the lockout and traded for Chris Bassitt after it. That club, under Showalter, won 101 games in 2022, and the Mets kept spending to try to sustain it, with mixed results.

This Orioles’ offseason, the second under this ownership group, it feels like president of baseball operations Mike Elias achieved more ambitious goals than the first time around. The trade of former top pitcher Grayson Rodriguez for outfielder Taylor Ward suggested this was going to be a distinctive offseason.

Ryan Helsley (two years, $28 million with an opt-out) was the first free agent addition of the offseason to fill the closer’s role, while Alonso’ five-year, $155 million deal was a statement of intent. They brought back Zach Eflin, traded for Shane Baz, then signed Bassitt to fortify the rotation.

Combined with the selection of Craig Albernaz as the manager, the moves feel like both a needed upgrade in talent — because hoping the core will simply continue to improve and cover up warts is not a real plan — and a way to address the team-building aspects that Alonso highlighted. The former Mets slugger has been a gravitational force to the Orioles’ homegrown hitters and is shielding them from scrutiny as they all look to bounce back from down seasons, and Bassitt referred to himself as a protector of his teammates who is here to bring everyone together. Eflin is beloved by the rest of the starters.

“You have to have the right mix of personalities and people, and I think if you have talent, at the end of the day that’s all great and important, but how does the talent come together? How do they interact with each other?” Alonso asked. “And obviously, playing against these guys in years prior, the talent jumps off the page. But also, too, another thing that’s really evident is how tight-knit this group is, how collective they are, and it’s really seeing that relationship; it shines through, especially watching and dealing with it firsthand as an opponent. The group is special, and I’m really excited to be a part of it.”

That the group is mostly still intact speaks to an aspect of the Orioles’ ownership that goes unnoticed. Alonso picked up several new teammates in New York — Lindor and Bassit among them — because they were expensive, nearing free agency, and their old clubs (Cleveland and Oakland, respectively) didn’t want to pay them.

For a long time, fans in Baltimore had to fear that their team would follow through on the publicly stated intention to emulate the Rays and Guardians, who trade core major league players once they get through the arbitration process and start earning substantial salaries.

Under new ownership, that hasn’t happened.

With Adley Rutschman leading the Orioles into the arbitration process last year, and so many others — Gunnar Henderson, Kyle Bradish, and Dean Kremer included — all earning large annual raises, it is clear the dynamic has changed.

Such trades don’t align even in the slightest with how the team operates now, and Alonso believes that’s important. But considering he was one of those core players in New York, and the expectation was always that the team’s newfound resources would be used to keep him in town for his entire career, he knows what a unique spot it can be for those players. Not having to worry about being dealt can help.

“You can’t really think too far out ahead, but you have to be aware of certain situations,” he said. “With great young talent, with great performances, as the years go on, guys get more expensive, and I think with things here and how things are playing out with this young core, if they keep performing, as the system is, they’re going to keep getting compensated.

“It’s not just signing people, it’s not trading for people, it’s retaining people that you already have who are performing at a very, very high level where it’s going to be almost impossible to replicate or replace.”