NEW YORK — With two strikes and two outs in the fifth inning, the Citi Field crowd rose to its feet. The moment was tense — about as tense as it can get in an eight-run game.
The 97th pitch of Jonah Tong’s major-league debut was a full-count fastball at Liam Hicks’ knees. When Andy Fletcher punched the Miami catcher out to end the inning, Tong let out a yell. He’d just qualified for a win in his debut.
Promoted after a meteoric rise through the Mets’ minor-league system, Tong showed plenty of promise on Friday night — more than the final line score might suggest. While Tong allowed four runs in the Miami fifth inning, the final three were unearned after a pair of New York errors in the field.
Tong struck out six and didn’t walk a batter — the latter quite the achievement for a pitcher who walked every fifth batter just two seasons ago.
If the Mets can hang on to a double-digit lead, Tong will join Nolan McLean in winning his major-league debut this month; the Mets have never before had two rookie starters pick up wins in their debuts in the same season. These two might happen in the same fortnight.
Coming out to a pair of songs by Nickelback — Tong is Canadian, after all — the 22-year-old right-hander retired the Marlins in order on just six pitches in his opening frame.
From there, the start was made both easier and harder by the Mets’ offensive prowess. New York scored a franchise-record 12 runs in the first two innings, giving Tong a month’s worth of run support. But those two big innings meant waits of 25 and 28 minutes between pitches for Tong, who allowed leadoff baserunners in each.
Tong, however, got out of those two jams. In the second, he stranded Otto Lopez after a leadoff double with the help of a one-out line drive right at Francisco Lindor. In the third, with runners at second and third and one out, he caught fellow rookie Jakob Marsee looking at a full-count fastball at the knees and induced an innocent grounder to second from Agustín Ramírez.
He wasn’t as fortunate in the fifth, when errors by Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso prolonged the inning ahead of Lopez’s two-run single. With Tong’s pitch count rising beyond his season-high in the minors, manager Carlos Mendoza allowed him one more batter in Hicks. Tong froze him with that 3-2 fastball — the fourth of his six strikeouts to come looking on his heater.
(Photo: Evan Bernstein / Getty Images)