Pete Alonso is Brodie Van Wagenen’s Mets saving grace

Pete Alonso and Brodie Van Wagenen Paul J. Bereswill (2)They try to cheapen this with baseballs that sure look juiced, with strike zones that sure seem to be shrinking. They try to make home runs less and less special because more and more guys who shouldn’t be launching these rockets are sending them off into orbit.

And yet the slugger still commands attention.

And so for Mets fans, across the rest of another rotten season of failed expectation, there will be Pete Alonso. There were 34,247 of them at Citi Field on Sunday afternoon, and they were sent into an instant slumber when Zack Wheeler surrendered four first-inning runs.

By the sixth it was 6-0 and Aaron Nola was painting corners and…