The Mets have hit some home runs in their series against the Dodgers in Los Angeles this week. Michael Conforto hit a grand slam -- the first of his career -- on Tuesday night, and the Mets won, 7-3. And then Pete Alonso hit two home runs on Wednesday night and the Mets were set up to get another game off the Dodgers before what would have been one of the Mets’ best wins of the season became their worst loss.

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In the ninth inning, it was as if the Mets were a puncher in there with a much better puncher. The Dodgers hit two more home runs of their own against a usually elite closer named Edwin Diaz, and L.A. turned an 8-5 deficit into a rousing 9-8 walk-off victory.

But Alonso, who is having the most rousing home run season any rookie Mets slugger has ever had, did hit two more. Going into Thursday night’s game at Dodger Stadium, it gave the kid 19 home runs for the season.

If you want to understand how much he has meant to a Mets team that is trying to hang in there against the Phillies in the National League East, you just take a look at the only two guys in the big leagues with more home runs than Alonso has right now:

Christian Yelich has 21.

Cody Bellinger has 20.

Then there is Alonso at 19.

Alonso needed to hit himself to the big leagues in Spring Training, and did just that. Even then one of the big questions around the team -- even as Alonso became a big home run story of the Florida spring -- was if he might play the first 15 days of his season in Syracuse. If the Mets did that, of course, they could push back his eligibility for free agency until 2025. They may have considered the notion. Just not for long. They couldn’t hold the kid from Tampa, Fla., down, or hold him back. Now it’s big league ballparks that can’t hold him.

The Mets’ rookie home run record is 26. That’s how many Darryl Strawberry hit in 1983. Alonso could have more than that by the All-Star Break. The all-time Mets record for home runs in a season is 41. Todd Hundley hit that number once, then Carlos Beltran did it later. If Alonso is blessed by good health, 41 is well within his reach. In this home run time in baseball, at a time across New York City when the Yankees hit a record number of home runs last season even with Aaron Judge hurt for a lot of it, now the Mets have a home run kid of their own.

Alonso has hit so many balls so far this season, starting in the spring -- “That was loud,” Boston’s Xander Bogaerts said after Alonso lost one over the 44-foot-high left-field wall at Jet Blue Park in Fort Myers -- that he has swung himself right into the middle of the Home Run Derby conversation as well. The Derby will be staged on the night of July 8 at Progressive Field in Cleveland. The way Alonso is going, he might not just be a part of that, he might stick around for the big game the next night.

Again: Two homers behind Yelich. One behind Bellinger.

So here is what I wanted to know from Alonso this week, as he continues to be one of the surprises of the big league season: Did he think back in Port St. Lucie that he’d hear his name being thrown around for the Derby before we even got out of the month of May?

“I honestly didn’t,” Alonso said. “But it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Something I’ve always wanted. I’m just happy to be considered, but that’s just something that fits into how happy I am with the way my season is going. I’d be happy if the opportunity came about. I hope I can do it.”

He has come a long way from hoping to make the Opening Day roster when he got to Port St. Lucie. He has come a much longer way from the spring of 2018, when he was a non-roster invitee after playing just 11 games of Double-A ball the year before. The Mets have imported home run hitters across their history, all the way to Yoenis Cespedes in 2015. But in the history of the Mets, truly, there are only two rookie home run guys to talk about, Darryl Strawberry and Pete Alonso. If the Mets’ two star starting pitchers, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard, had pitched the way Alonso has hit home runs so far, the Mets would be a lot closer to first place than they are, and have a lot better record than they do.

Alonso came away from Wednesday’s night loss, even after the roof caved in on his team at the end, with the 19 homers and 43 RBIs. At the moment, Bryce Harper has 10 homers and 40 RBIs for the Phillies, even if Harper shows all signs of beginning to crank things up. So far, though? Alonso has mattered a lot more to the third-place team in the NL East than Harper has to the team leading the division.

Alonso was also asked the other day what the entire experience of his rookie year has been like.

“Walking on a dream,” he said. “Dream come true.”

You could say. A season that could have begun in Syracuse will likely end up in Cleveland on the 8th of July. Home run kid living the dream, on his way to the Home Run Derby.