Jack Flynn - Dominic Smith

PC - Reese Kaplan

My favorite moment of the 2019 Mets season was the final one.

I loved watching Dominic Smith strut around the bases, soaking in the cheers from the crowd after his improbable three-run homer gave the Mets a walk-off victory over the Braves in Game 162.

I loved watching his teammates spill out of the dugout to greet Smith at home plate, and seeing how excited they were for one last opportunity to celebrate more than just a victory on the field.

They were there to celebrate a game-ending home run, of course – but they were also there to celebrate the man who hit it.

All season long, Smith was the best of teammates. One could’ve forgiven a grumpy day or two from a man whose dream of starting at first base for the Mets came slowly crashing down around him, one Pete Alonso moonshot at a time.

Alonso became a national phenomenon in 2019; Smith was being reduced to being his defensive replacement and scrounging for occasional playing time in left field. There was a one-week sentence to hard labor in Syracuse. There was a two-month stint in the Injured List. There were only eight starts at first base for the Mets, a position that scouts once predicted that Smith would compete for the Gold Glove at during his professional career.

Through it all, Smith carried himself with the exuberance of a young man playing a child’s game for a living, and with the professionalism of a grizzled veteran who cared more about team success that personal accolades.

Now, as he rounded third base and flung his batting helmet toward LaGuardia Airport, his teammates were going to thank him for the example he set in 2019.

Smith was mobbed as he touched home plate, and his teammates celebrated in what became the fashion in Queens last season. Within moments he had been stripped of his jersey, thankfully revealing a Mets-branded muscle shirt beneath. (Last September near Flushing Bay is no time to skip layers!)

Hugs were exchanged, including one that ended a carefully choreographed routine with the Polar Bear himself. Smith accepted thanks and praise from several other teammates, before returning to the clubhouse to take off what was left of his Mets uniform one more time.

It was the image of the hug with Alonso, though, that has stuck with me. It’s hard not to look at video of that moment and see it as a fitting goodbye to the end of Dominic Smith’s tenure with the Mets.

It’s almost mid-January now, and it hasn’t happened yet, but sometime in the coming weeks we are going to learn Dominic Smith’s fate. It’s going to be with another team, in another city, and it will represent a new opportunity to reach the potential that Mets scouts saw in him when they made Smith their first round pick in 2013.

Because the Mets have to trade Dominic Smith before Opening Day 2020.

Smith’s circuitous route to the major leagues, one that took him six and a half years to get from Gardena, CA to home plate at Citi Field on that late September evening, was just along enough to allow Alonso to sneak up from behind and roar past him on the depth chart.

The reigning Rookie of the Year is the future at first base, not Smith, and National League rules make it clear that there’s just not room for both of them in Queens. Smith is too good to stash on the bench, and his value to any ball club is diminished by trying to shoehorn him into the overcrowded situation in left field.

Brodie Van Wagenen knows this. He knows that Rob Manfred isn’t going to suddenly announce that the National League is adopting the designated hitter for 2020. He knows that a former first-round pick, one who is still only 24 years old, has more value to the Mets as a trade chip then as an Alonso caddy.

Dominic Smith is going to be traded. I am going to be disappointed when it happens. I am going to root for him to have a long and successful career wherever he ends up.

And I hope that his last career home run at Citi Field has already been struck, on a late September evening, where grateful teammates congratulated him for what he did on the field, and who he was in the clubhouse.