David Lennon: Mets' Jonah Tong seeks to learn from mistakes in latest chance
Mets pitcher Jonah Tong follows through on a pitch against the Cincinnati Reds during the third inning at Citi Field on May 27. Credit: Brad Penner
It wasn’t the same Jonah Tong who showed up Sunday morning in the Mets’ clubhouse.
Yes, there was his usual No. 21 hanging in the locker, and upon arrival, Tong was welcomed back with hugs all around, from Juan Soto to Francisco Lindor to Sean Manaea.
Still, something was different.
Not that Tong appeared more comfortable than he was in his previous two trips to Flushing, but he came across with a self-assured vibe, the kind that develops after pushing through a traumatic experience and coming out the other side in one piece.
Tong was The Next Big Thing when he was fast-tracked to the Mets in 2025, fresh off the Futures Game with can’t-miss-prospect status. A year later, after getting banged up — both emotionally and statistically — during his Flushing stay, Tong was sitting at Triple-A Syracuse with a 6.00 ERA, wondering what was next for him.
“Failure is inevitable,” he said Sunday before the Mets’ 4-2 victory over the Giants at Citi Field. “Everybody hits it at different points in their careers.”
Then Tong abruptly switched gears, rethinking his choice of using that word.
“I wouldn’t even call it that — sorry,” he said. “But there’s so many things that we have control over in our career, and sometimes there’s just lessons that need to be learned. I’m just really excited to see the person I have become out of it.”
The Mets can say the same. Tong, who will start Monday against the Marlins in Miami, is up here to stay for the remainder of this season, so consider these next three weeks part of an audition to determine if he’s rotation-worthy for 2027.
Tong flunked the last one, going 2-3 with a 7.71 ERA in five starts down the stretch for a Mets team that wound up missing the playoffs by a single game in 2025.
He returned to deliver an unimpressive Grapefruit League performance, then got called up in May for a three-game relief cameo, striking out seven and walking seven in 10 innings (3.60 ERA).
What has changed since? Tong said he’s gone back to leaning on his signature pitch, the Vulcan-grip changeup, and some of his mechanical glitches were fixed during this season at Syracuse, where he was 4-1 with a 3.00 ERA in his last 10 starts (coming one out short of a seven-inning no-hitter on Aug. 29).
Tong arrives having allowed only two earned runs in his previous 21 1⁄3 innings (0.84 ERA) with 23 strikeouts, enough to earn him a September sequel.
“It’s part of growing up in the game and going through adversity,” interim manager Andy Green said. “You come back in a different spot sometimes and that spot serves you better. I just want to see him go compete and be himself.”
The Mets already have witnessed a handful of comebacks from their homegrown kiddie corps this season, to varying degrees of difficulty. The most extreme was Sunday’s starter, Christian Scott, who returned from Tommy John surgery to become one of their most trusted starters and pencil himself in for 2027.
Scott is 27, but before his elbow blew out, he was supposed to be a Tong, or even a Nolan McLean.
He made his 21st start Sunday — on eight days’ rest, in deference to his long UCL rehab — and was limited to 80 pitches. He struck out seven without a walk, and if not for Jung Hoo Lee’s two-run blooper that parachuted down behind first base in the fourth inning, his afternoon would’ve been flawless.
The highlight was whiffing Rafael Devers twice, both on cutters (which feature a new grip), though Green went to lefty Nate Lavender with two outs in the fifth rather than let Scott go for the hat trick against Devers.
“I thought he was awesome,” Green said. “The cutters he threw to Devers were nasty. That’s a guy who’s about as hot as you can possibly be right now. He located those incredibly well. His fastball had life. From a full-arsenal perspective, really, really good.”
Unlike Scott, Tong isn’t rebounding from a major surgery, but the same lessons about resiliency apply. While it’s true the Mets aren’t facing the same playoff-race pressure they were a year ago for Tong’s debut, the stakes still can’t feel any higher for a young pitcher trying to make everyone forget those first impressions.
On Sunday, Tong talked about working his way back “brick-by-brick” and the benefit of having a “boatload of experience” this time around.
A year ago, you could see him struggling under the weight of his disappointment, not only because of a derailed dream shot but the damage he did to the Mets’ postseason hopes. When Tong takes the mound Monday, he’ll do so with a tougher skin and a more narrow focus.
“It’s been a while,” he said. “But honestly, I’ve been where my feet are the entire time. You’re gonna hear me say that a lot.”
Even so, Tong has to admit life is better when he’s standing on a major-league mound, and the Mets hope he deserves to stay there. At the moment, the rotation has plenty of question marks going forward, with McLean, Scott and Manaea — who is due another $25 million through next season — the only apparent locks for 2027.
Tong can’t win an Opening Day job in September. Performance grades for this time of year on teams playing out the string tend to come with an asterisk. But he’s still got a lot to gain — and this Jonah Tong seems more like the guy everyone first expected last season.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
