Laura Albanese: Jonah Tong has earned another chance with Mets
Mets pitcher Jonah Tong reacts after the top of the fourth inning against the Cincinnati Reds at Citi Field on May 27. Credit: Brad Penner
As of two weeks ago, it seemed unlikely that Jonah Tong would return to the majors this year.
“He’s still grinding, still getting better, still working, so [Triple-A] is the right spot for him right now,” Mets interim manager Andy Green said on Aug. 17. But . . .
“That could change.”
Active major-league rosters expand to 28 players on Tuesday. For a contender, that means bringing up hot young talent that potentially could help get that team to the postseason. But the Mets are in a far different category, and whereas calling up Tong might have felt like a bad idea even a few weeks ago, the affable righty is picking the right time to make a strong case for himself. And now he’s given the Mets no choice but to pay attention.
Look at the numbers and you’ll guess that it’s been a nightmare season for Tong, who has a 4.54 ERA in 23 starts for Triple-A Syracuse. (That becomes less of an issue when you consider that two weeks ago, his ERA was 6.11.)
On Saturday, he flirted with a no-hitter, finally giving up a single with one out to go in a seven-inning game. He has a 2.20 ERA in his last eight starts, and that includes an Aug. 5 clunker in which he allowed five runs on five homers in five innings.
Maybe more importantly, he’s cut down on the walks, issuing only two in each of his last three appearances.
But that’s not the only reason Tong should get another shot this year.
See, in that Aug. 17 discussion, Green laid out part of his philosophy when it comes to call-ups. In short, promoting a player for the sake of filling out a spot usually is bad business.
“You want people to feel like they earn the right to be on the field,” Green said, pointing to the trio of young pitchers making up the bulk of the Mets’ rotation. “I think all these [young pitchers] here, one reason they’re performing well is they’ve all earned the right to be here.”
Not only is Tong starting to earn it, but he’s doing it the hard way.
When he was successful in Double-A last year, he did it primarily on the back of two pitches — his fastball and his “Vulcan grip’’ changeup. That’s fine at the lower levels, but it’s very hard to live that way as a major-league starter — something he more or less proved when he was called up late in 2025 and pitched to a 7.71 ERA despite showcasing flashes of true dominance.
This year, then, was about further development. And not only is development often not linear, it sometimes can be messy — the equivalent of taking everything out of your closet before you organize it.
With the expanded repertoire, Tong’s arm slot dropped a little lower, and tinkering with pitches sometimes can lead to undesirable results.
And so he struggled. And struggled. And struggled some more.
But there’s evidence that he may have come out the other side, and that’s really what should earn him another shot here. For one, it underscores the work he’s put in, and for another, it showcases the mental toughness the Mets want to see in their young pitchers.
It’s the type of thing we saw in-game during Sunday’s 6-3 loss to the Astros when Zac Thornton rebounded after allowing a homer by Jeremy Pena on his third pitch of the afternoon. Thornton, the type of soft-tossing lefty who necessity dictates must live on the edge, also wiggled his way out of a bases-loaded jam in the second.
By the time he departed after the fifth, he had allowed only two runs and six hits with no walks and five strikeouts despite not working with his best stuff.
Unlike Thornton, Tong is the type of player who tends to wear his heart on his sleeve. There were a few times in 2025 when we saw him get emotional after tough starts, and that occasionally had people questioning his resilience.
But it’s backwards to believe that a person can’t show emotion and still exhibit mental toughness, and Tong has had to be plenty tough to withstand his thorny foray into the majors last year and the minor-league season that followed. Never mind that he was promoted in May and that in his last taste of the majors, he allowed five runs (four earned) in 3 1⁄3 innings.
Beyond that, this is about as soft of a landing as you can give him. These games don’t matter in the traditional sense, and a bad outing now isn’t nearly as disastrous as having one during a pennant race.
If Tong really is part of this team’s future — and Green says he is — then this is the time to lay down the building blocks.
For what it’s worth, by Sunday, it seemed as if Green was at least beginning to lean in that direction. He had watched three innings of Tong’s one-hitter before being pulled away by other duties, but he was impressed.
“I think we’re glad to see those results from Jonah,” he said. “It looked like up to that point in time [that I had watched], his fastball had real life, which is really encouraging. He was winning at the top of the zone, the ball was really jumping out of his hands and he’s doing some really nice things.”
So is it Tong time? Well, maybe.
“That is definitely not unseen,” Green said. “It definitely becomes a discussion point for David [Stearns], myself and other people. Encouraging outing for him for sure.”
Sure was. So let’s see if he can do it again on a bigger stage. If not now, when?
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
