Right-hander Jonah Tong, the No. 52 prospect in baseball, will make his major-league debut with the New York Mets this week, according to league sources. Tong is expected to start the Mets game against the Miami Marlins on Friday.
“It’s all about him dominating the minor leagues,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “It’s hard to keep him there.”
President of baseball operations David Stearns talks often of wanting to see prospects “conquer” a level before being promoted. Tong accomplished that, insomuch as one can, in two Triple-A starts. With Syracuse, Tong has yet to allow a run, striking out 17 and walking three in 11 2/3 innings.
For the season, Tong has posted a 1.43 ERA in 113 2/3 innings. He has 179 strikeouts and 47 walks this season.
“He’s pushed us,” Stearns said. “To his credit, he really conquered everything we put in front of him. He exceeded our expectations throughout the year and he put himself in position to be considered for a day like this.”
Tong is the second starter the Mets have called up this month who wasn’t even in the big-league clubhouse for spring training. Nolan McLean has already dazzled in two major-league starts, allowing two runs in 12 2/3 innings for New York.
Whereas McLean came up to fill an open spot in the rotation, the Mets are carving out a sixth slot for Tong this week, which allows them to push back David Peterson and Kodai Senga over the weekend against Miami. Whether Tong gets a second start or an extended look on the big-league staff is up in the air.
“We’re going turn by turn at this point,” Stearns said. “We try not to plan too far ahead.”
“We’re getting to the point where our job is to put the best players out there day in, day out,” Mendoza said. “Performance matters. We’ve got to see performance.”
After leading the majors in rotation ERA through 2 1/2 months, New York has seen its starting pitching fall off a cliff over the last 2 1/2 months. Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas, who each missed the first half of the season, have not performed once back. (Montas is now out for the season with a UCL injury.) Kodai Senga submitted another abbreviated start on Monday night, and he hasn’t looked like an ace since his own injury cost him a month in the middle of the season.
It’s reasonable to read between the lines that the rotation spots of Senga and Manaea, who entered the spring as the club’s top two starters, aren’t guaranteed through September.
The Mets need to make the playoffs — they currently lead Cincinnati by 2 1/2 games for the final wild card spot — but also to construct the best roster possible to compete once there. The ceiling on Tong, like with McLean, is higher right now than it is for other members of the starting rotation.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Mendoza said. “When you get that type of performance, it’s hard to ignore. There’s too much to like.”
A native of Ontario, Canada, Tong was a seventh-round pick by the Mets in 2022 after he spent his senior year of high school at Georgia Premier Academy. After a slow start in 2023, he has raced through the full-season levels of the minor leagues in the last two seasons, pitching at three levels in 2024 and two levels this season.
“This has gone farther than any of us would have anticipated at the start of the season,” said Stearns.
The Athletic’s Keith Law didn’t have Tong on his preseason top 100 but moved him up to No. 52 in the rankings. Tong’s delivery isn’t one Law tends to favor, but his athleticism makes it work.
“Tong comes straight over the top, the kind of delivery I normally hate. But he really makes the most of it with a lively fastball that’s been up to 98, a 12/6 curveball, and a changeup, all of which have ticked up this year,” Law wrote. “Minor-league batting averages are very noisy, so there’s a big caveat here, but batters do not see the ball from Tong’s hand.”
(Photo: Joe Robbins / Icon Sportswire via Associated Press)