Dennis Braun, who coached Pete Alonso at Plant High School in Tampa and says that Alonso had “oppo power” -- opposite-field -- like he’d never seen before from a high school kid, was on the phone on Wednesday afternoon as the Mets were finishing a four-game sweep against the Marlins, a sweep that made their record 59-56 and meant they had won 13 out of their last 14 games.

“The son of a gun hit another one,” Braun said.

He was talking about his guy, Alonso. It was No. 37 for the slugging first baseman, as he continues to make himself as much of a home-run story as anybody in baseball, and just not because he won a million bucks at the Home Run Derby last month. If Alonso hits just five more homers between now and the end of the season, he will have hit more than anybody else in a single season in Mets history. But his high school coach doesn’t think Alonso will stop there.

“He’s already had his slump,” Braun said, talking about the skid Alonso had to fight through after the Home Run Derby. “Now if he goes off on another rip where he hits 10 in two-and-a-half weeks, I honestly believe he can get to 55.”

Then Pete Alonso’s high school coach said, “If he keeps going like this and the Mets keep going like this, guess what? He’s gonna hit his way right into the MVP conversation.”

We knew Cody Bellinger had this kind of season in him, even the way Bellinger’s numbers dropped in 2018 after his own big rookie year. We knew Christian Yelich, the reigning MVP of the National League, could hit like this.

Nobody saw the kid from Tampa coming. Pete Alonso was no sure thing to even be with the Mets when they left Port St. Lucie in March. He made the team, occasionally hitting balls out of sight. He started hitting home runs in Florida and the only time he really stopped was after the All-Star break. Now he is hitting them again. He hit one on Monday against the Marlins, one Tuesday, the two-run shot in the first inning on Wednesday.

“He could always handle the hitting part,” Braun said. “I used to joke with him after he transferred over to us (from Tampa’s Jesuit High School) that as long as he knocked in more than he gave up in the field, that would work just fine with he.”

That’s what he’d heard about Alonso before he got to Plant, that the kid could hit like crazy but wasn’t much of a fielder. Braun said he had him play some third base, finally made him a first baseman. And then he watched the kid with all that oppo power outwork everybody in the field.

"I expect that he’s the same now as he was with us,” said Braun, who also coached Astros prize prospect Kyle Tucker at Plant. “He’ll keep fielding ground balls as long as somebody will hit him them to him.”

Alonso has transformed the Mets batting order the way Yoenis Cespedes did after Sandy Alderson traded for Cespedes in the summer of 2015, and Cespedes hit the Mets all the way to the World Series. You better believe he has plenty of help at the top of the order now. Jeff McNeil is a hitting machine, and has been since he showed up at Citi Field a year ago. Michael Conforto, who hit two home runs himself on Wednesday afternoon, looks like a star again.

But Alonso, out of Plant High in Tampa, is the guy who has changed everything for the Mets. He won’t be MVP. But his high school coach is right. He is slugging his way into the conversation these days: Thirty-seven home runs and 83 RBIs and a .595 slugging percentage and an OPS of .958.

The Mets have had very few power hitters like this, going all the way back to their origins in 1962. In fact, he seems poised to demolish club’s single-season home run record of 41, set by Todd Hundley in 1996 and tied by Carlos Beltran in 2006. Alonso even gives his teammates and Mets fans a rallying cry as they have rallied their way from being 10 games under .500 to being a game out of the second Wild Card by Wednesday night and eight-and-a-half games out of first place.

The next few weeks will tell you everything about the Mets. They get the Nationals this weekend at home and then they go to Atlanta. They get the Royals, and then there is a homestand against the Braves, Indians and Cubs before they go to Philadelphia. They have played some bad teams during this streak.

But it wasn’t so long ago that the Mets were supposed to be a bad, nowhere team that was supposed to be a seller at the Trade Deadline, and not a buyer. They decided to play the season and not give up on it. They traded for Marcus Stroman instead of trading away Noah Syndergaard of Zack Wheeler. Now here they are, with a chance. We will find out over the rest of August what they do with it.

McNeil homered on Wednesday. He is hitting .339 and could win the NL batting crown. Conforto hit his two. But the big man, in all ways, is the rookie from Plant High, who goes into the weekend with one less home run than Mike Trout and four fewer RBIs, two home runs behind Yelich, tied with Bellinger. He’s the perfect guy for this Mets run, if you think about it. Nobody saw them coming. Nobody saw Pete Alonso coming. This is the way it happened for Aaron Judge a couple of years ago in New York. Now the Mets have the home-run kid everybody is talking about.

“Call me back when he gets to 50,” Dennis Braun said.