Let’s go back to the 2018 postseason. The most iconic moment during that October was a young Milwaukee Brewers hurler in Brandon Woodruff shocking the world by hitting a bomb off of Clayton Kershaw, the future slam dunk Hall of Famer. It was even more impressive that it was lefty versus lefty.
The Brewers would lose that series, but they did take game one with Woodruff being the hero on the mound and at the plate. What most people forget about that contest is that Milwaukee’s starter that day was not Woodruff but Gio Gonzalez. Woodruff was the second pitcher to enter the game in what was a bullpen game for the Brewers.
So what does this 2018 moment have to do with the 2026 New York Mets? Back when he was running the show in Milwaukee, David Stearns often got his top pitching prospects acclimated to the big leagues by throwing them into reliever roles, like what we saw with Woodruff.
It’s hard to argue against the philosophy given Milwaukee's history of developing pitchers. With that being said, that idea should not be universal in how every pitcher is treated, which brings us to the present day Mets.
Yesterday, New York optioned prized prospect Jonah Tong down to AAA after his third appearance of the season. Although we expected Tong to get most of the work on Tuesday night, it was still a mystery as to how Stearns and Carlos Mendoza would deploy the righty. As I outlined above, using young future starting pitchers in the bullpen can be a successful way to get them comfortable pitching at the big league level.
It also needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis with a heavy influence being on the state of the team. The Brewers embraced pitching chaos and had a history of being able to execute it effectively. The Mets have had more success as of late, but with the starting rotation struggling, it made very little sense to use Tong out of the bullpen.
After Clay Holmes suffered a fractured fibula that will hold him out for the foreseeable future, the Mets didn’t have an immediate replacement. This went along with David Peterson’s struggles in the starting five along with Sean Manaea being relegated to the bullpen before a promising bulk outing on Monday. All of this is to say that Tong should be a staple of the Mets rotation going forward.
Tong’s outings won’t always be pretty (3.1 innings and four earned runs in his last appearance out of the bullpen illustrated that). He’s still young and will undergo a lot of growing pains. Maybe I am naive in thinking the Mets season is still far from over. Although it hurts to be in the National League compared to the American League, teams have comeback from greater deficits.
With that being said, this is still a team that is well under .500. As Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing injected some life into the lineup, the youth movement should not stop there but instead extend to the rotation.
Although the sample size is incredibly small, some of the numbers coming into Tong’s bulk outing on Tuesday were intriguing. Even with his clunker on Tuesday against the Seattle Mariners, Tong had induced plenty of weak contact. He has a minuscule barrel rate of just six percent with a 30% hard hit rate.
Opponents are unable to square up any of Tong’s pitches. Prior to his last appearance, the young right-hander had an incredible 55% ground ball rate. Some of these values are in large part due to Tong barley pitching in 2026, but even if there is some regression to the mean built in, this might be the type of pitcher Tong blossoms into.
The weak contact had helped Tong pitch to a .168 opponent batting average in his first couple of bullpen outings. When comparing his first two appearances this year to a season ago, he had cut his barrel rate by two-thirds and increased his ground ball rate by nearly 15 percentage points.
Although it got roughed up on Tuesday, Tong had a fastball run value of two coming into that day. Last year, in limited playing time, it was at negative four. A plus-six jump is monumental.
Tong isn’t throwing any harder than he did a year ago. Instead, he is actually throwing fewer four-seam fastballs. Maybe this changes as he works deeper into ballgames, but cutting back on the pitch has made it more lethal.
His four-seamer is still his primary pitch, but instead of going to it 57% of the time in 2025, that is now down to 45% this season. The pitch that has potentially taken his repertoire up a notch? That would be a cutter. Tong did not have a cutter in his back pocket a season ago, but he has gone to that pitch over 20% of the time (including a hefty number against Seattle). The cutter has made up for fewer four-seam fastballs, while also cutting his curveball usage in half.
Tong was one of the hottest pitching prospects in all of baseball before making his debut towards the end of last season. No one should have any takeaways based on the minimal sample he has showed the baseball world. What has not been fair to him in his short 2026 stint is the lack of clarity with how he is being used.
It’s quite possible these decisions are being more thoroughly discussed behind closed doors, but even hours before first pitch Monday night in Seattle, Mendoza laid out a possibility that Tong could be the guy out of the bullpen following Austin Warren as the opener. There should be enhanced clarity and consistency with how Tong will be utilized.
The San Francisco Giants have faced a lot of much-deserved scrutiny for not playing star prospect Bryce Eldridge everyday, but the same could be said for not having Tong be a fixture in the five-man rotation. The Mets don’t have the luxury the Brewers had almost a decade ago. They are not the same team. They are not the same organization.
With Holmes out and others not living up to the Mets hopes and dreams, Tong deserves every opportunity to start every fifth day. There will be bumps along the way, but Jonah Tong is ready to be thrusted into action from the very first inning. Right now, it’s just a matter of the Mets fully letting him go.
3 comments:
Tong needs to go back to AAA and DOMINATE them. It is always a game of adjustments, but his goal should be back for good, no later than the end of June. And definitely, no later than August 1. I fault the Mets for his struggles this year. They should’ve had him pitching with his current repertoire at this time last year. They should’ve known that he would’ve needed more variety in his pitches. That being said, it is now time for him to totally hone in and destroy the opposition.
I think that you have shown some very relevant information. Tong dominated in the lower minors because people can't square up his great stuff. He makes some mistakes, but at that level they didn't punish him for it. At the MLB level, they have. So once Tong refines his deliver to minimize mistakes, he should be very effective at the MLB level.
Nice analysis, but I would draw a different conclusion from the information you have uncovered. First, l would argue that the most important change Tong has made is in his arm angle, and delivery, something I have argued for since I joined the Mack's Mets team. Movement pattern changes come in pairs and then some. He is making the relevant physical changes to support the arm angle change, the failure of Manaea to do two seasons ago led to his injuries and poor performance last year and to the long road back.
The change in arm angle changes how the same pitches react, especially the four seamer and braking stuff. Right now he has less control of his four seamer, is uncertain of how it reacts, and has less confidence in it. Thrown from his previous arm angle, Tong's curveball had little horizontal movement and was basically 12/6 and lacked sharp break. The curveball has horizontal movement now, but is not a sharply or late breaking pitch. The new arm angle opens up the cutter which is invariable the sharpest and latest breaking pitch and for the moment the one that is the most effective for him. It is also a pitch that allows him to use his changeup to good effect. It splits the difference in a way between the four seamer and the curveball and requires no additional spin or grip changes beyond those that are necessary simply to have the ball cut. So his highest functioning repetoire now is the cutter and changeup, which explains the changes in the percentages of his pitches.
The key point is that he has opened up his potential repetoire to four or five pitches, (adding the potential of a slider), but he only has confidence and command in two of those.
Two pitches are enough for some relief work, but not for starter work at the major league level.
I think it makes most sense for him to take his lumps and find his pitches in the minors this year while he is getting used to the arm angle change and the physical changes it calls for, and develops confidence and command of at least one of the other pitches that is now available to him.
My preference actually would be to have him devote his time to working on the four seamer and the slider as he has one off speed pitch in the change-up. The cutter can work in on righties, and the. slider away. and vice versa on lefties. The four seamer is a less heavy feeling pitch and can work off the other three. Right now it is sailing on him; at its best he will aim to control it higher in the zone as an out pitch, and the lower arm angle will give it some movement it did not have before. The curve can come later, and will be most effective the sharper and later the break on it, but it requires changes in spin characteristics and more work to be truly effective for him.
Because he has reduced the likelihood of injury while at teh same time opening up a potentially larger and varied repetoire allowing him to pitch on every plane and more than one at a time, I am optimistic about his future. But if he is put in a starting position where the wins and losses matter, he runs a very big risk of reverting back to his older, still more comfortable movement pattern, and that would be a very big mistake on all fronts.
And there is frankly from a developmentally point of view, nothing to be said for risking that at this point as he makes such a fundamental change biomechanically speaking. The last thing we want is to put him in a position where his instincts to succeed will conflict with the work and discipline necessary to make the pattern change work
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