Mets' Jonah Tong has a chance to turn bad memories into better results with Thursday's start vs. Padres
The Mets' Jonah Tong pitches during the first inning against the Texas Rangers at Citi Field on Sep. 12. Credit: Jim McIsaac
After Jonah Tong’s start against the Rangers last week, he stood in front of SNY cameras, struggling not to cry.
“It’s just life,” said Tong, who’s only experienced 22 years of it, and had just been shelled for six runs in two-thirds of an inning. “I’m always grateful to be doing this.”
That’s what everyone saw: The kid rushed to the majors after just two Triple-A starts, devastated he couldn’t hoist a burden that shouldn’t have been his to begin with.
But there’s what happens, and then there’s what happens next.
He met with Mets' vice president of player development Andy Green “and [Tong] immediately went right back to [a bad outing last year against Single-A] Jersey Shore,” Green said Wednesday. “He got one out and didn’t get out of the first inning, and he bounced back and had an amazing year last year that catapulted him to this stage . . .
“That’s what you’re looking for in young guys. Show me that you can handle the tough moments because it’s guaranteed that they’re going to show up.”
There’s one through line when it comes to the three prospects tasked with helping this team grit its way to a playoff spot and beyond: Failure.
Or, rather, what they're able to do with it.
It’s one of the reasons Tong is going back out there Thursday, starting against a Padres team with no shortage of dangerous hitters.
It's why Nolan McLean has dominated even though last year, when he was promoted to Double-A, he went 0-8 with a 5.29 ERA over his first 12 games. Brandon Sproat is quick to mention his struggles with Florida in 2021 (6.65 ERA), his struggles when he was first promoted to Triple-A in 2024 (7.53 ERA) and again, early this season, when he posted a 5.95 ERA in his first 15 games with Syracuse.
And yet, when the stakes have been their highest, they’ve mostly delivered. McLean has a 1.19 ERA and 40 strikeouts over his first six major-league starts — the only pitcher to ever achieve an ERA that low and a strikeout count that high over his first six. Sproat has a 2.25 ERA in two starts. Tong, after a promising debut, was uneven in his second outing and was victimized by the Rangers in his third; the youngest and most inexperienced of the three, he has an 8.49 ERA.
“I think adversity gives you your first real shot to be adaptable,” Green said, noting that when McLean struggled against lefties last year, he introduced a curveball with depth and a backdoor sinker.
It’s an amalgam of things — coaching, analytics, nutrition, training and “mental performance,” Green said. In the end, failure is data, and data can be valuable.
“[It’s] being adaptable under stress, like adding to their arsenal over the years as they start to run into things and challenge them,” he said. “They’ve risen to meet every challenge.”
Manager Carlos Mendoza is certainly grateful. Wednesday, as he congratulated the Brooklyn Cyclones, who won the South Atlantic League Championship for the first time in franchise history, he noted that they were “proud of the whole group and the whole player development [team], scouting, with what they’re doing . . .
“We’re feeling it here. We see it.”
And that, of course, is the ultimate goal.
“You want to impact this space,” Green said. “You want to impact the New York Mets and the major-league team and that’s most obvious with the three guys in the rotation right now, so I think that’s exciting for player development.”
It turns out, a big part of that equation is learning through failure, but also seeing failure as learning. Tong’s tears proved he wasn’t inured to it, but his later reflection is a possible indicator that he didn’t feel incapacitated by it.
“What he takes from this — success, failure, you stand on it to launch yourself to the next level of greatness,’ Green said. “Whatever that looks like for him, I don’t know. I know he’s going to be really good in the long run.”
Man of steel
Francisco Alvarez, who’s playing with a torn UCL in his right thumb and a broken left pinky, was back in the lineup and catching Wednesday after getting nailed in the triceps by Bradgley Rodriguez’s 99.8-mph sinker Tuesday.
“It’s amazing, as soon as it happened last night, when I went out onto the field, I thought he was going to be done,” Mendoza said. “[And then] before the game’s over, he’s in the dugout with eyes on it and a smile on his face, and I was like, wow . . . It’s grinding time. It’s go time. They know the importance of being available and they are.”
Luis Torrens (forearm contusion) was reinstated from the injured list; Hayden Senger was optioned in a corresponding move.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
