REMEMBER JONAH TONG SMILING AFTER GATORADE LAST YEAR?
You know the way some folks go to a psychiatrist for some minor concerns and come out like raving lunatics?
Or the guy that goes into the hospital to get his tonsils removed, gets C-Dif, and gets a leg amputated before he goes home.
That’s about the result of the treatment from Mets experts for Jonah Tong.
In 2025, Tong was MINOR LEAGUES PITCHER OF THE YEAR. Incredible!
He did that while just turning 22 in June 2025.
MLB.com wrote this:
“…nobody was more unhittable than Jonah Tong, who lapped the field by putting up videogame numbers before his Aug. 29 MLB debut. Tong led the Minors in ERA (1.43), strikeouts (179) and average-against (1.48) while ranking second in WHIP (0.92) as he morphed into MiLB's much-watch hurler over a string of ascendant performances.
“He allowed one earned run or fewer in 18 of his 22 starts, two or fewer hits in eight of his first 13, and no hits at all in two, compiling 24 strikeouts over the course of those 11 2/3 combined no-hit frames.”
Back to me:
He allowed 2 HRs in 114 minor league IP in 2025. One every 57 innings.
Then, he got called up to the big leagues, in a Mets pitching emergency at year end 2025, despite limited experience, with just a few AAA outings. Against much better MLB hitting, he pitched reasonably well in 3 Mets outings and poorly in 2 others. No surprise.
The Mets, however, looked at that big picture of Tong in 2025 and seemingly decided, “we must ignore his incredible minor league success in 2025 and COMPLETELY FIX HIM!”
They did change things, all right.
In AAA this year, 20 HRs in 86 innings.
One every 4 innings. 14 times the 2025 rate.
A 2026 ERA of 5.46, as compared to last year’s 1.43. Quadrupled.
His 2025 WHIP of 0.92 has jumped 59% to 1.46 this year.
Heckuva “fix”, wouldn’t you say?
Maybe they “fixed” Ryan Lambert and Dylan Ross equally well this year, too. Expertly repaired Ryan Clifford?
SOLUTION?
We need a SWAT team to show up at each Mets minor league location with a bullhorn and say:
“PUT YOU I PADS ON THE GROUND. STEP AWAY FROM THE PROSPECTS”!
Somehow, I think Jonah Tong’s stats would be far better if they just left him the heck alone.
I WANT MY TONG TERRIFIC BACK!
IMAGINE THIS TEAM’S OFFENSE…
If Soto was playing, rather than Bumbling Brett Baty?
It would be TOUGH.
JEFRY YAN…
…is surely a feel-good story.
But he sure seems to bounce a lot of sliders in the dirt. I hope he cuts those down. If he does, I will be jumping up and down.
Yan’s sliders must be high enough to 1) induce swings & 2) avoid wild pitches. He threw 12 wild pitches in 41.2 AAA IP, a really high rate.
12 comments:
Re: Yan
Imagine if pitchers still had to hit and this guy had to set in?
Tell ya what... he's still may not avoid a punch in the face id he pulls those antics at home plate again...
Re: Tong
I'm going to wait until Jules turns on his computer and then, I'm going to let him explain how the nurds pissed in his beer this season...
Me?
He's my 2027 CL
He looks physically like someone you would not want to tangle with…but he is going to attract the opposition attention. For sure.
While I think it is not quite so simple as just this, DeMayo blames Tong issues on this: “ After putting up video game numbers in 2025, Tong entered 2026 looking to expand his repertoire to find a trustworthy pitch that moves glove side, focusing on different variations of a cutter and a slider.
Early on, it seemed Tong was willing to sacrifice results to just pepper the cutter to try to make it a proper offering, and he's thrown it 20 percent of the time this season. It's fair to say that the pitch has been inconsistent this season, where some starts it looked good and others it isn’t quite there.”
So…Tong needs to cut the use of the cutter in half or more, and get up here to replace the guy who robbed our Stock.
Cue Jules...
Ok; I'll take the bait. I can't offer a reconstruction of the why and the how of what the coaches recommended, etc. and pretend that it would be accurate..All I can give is a rational account that starts with a dilemma that has to be resolved and then consider the paths that would have made sense to resolve the issue.
Before I start, i do want to remind everyone of my proposed solution: Trade him, don't fix him; trade high was my suggestion that I had repeated many times.
That said: here are the two dilemmas the team and Tong were faced with -- whether they recognized both, I cannot say.
1. He had no pitch with lateral, or diagonal movement, so threw in only one plane. This is an obvious long term limitation.
2. His over the top release point came from a combination of an actual 3/4 delivery (arm relationship to his body) in combination with an extreme lateral bend of his spine. To the extent that bend occurs in the lumbar spine, it presents a massive risk of lower back injury. The lumbar spine is not built to work that way.
Now I am going to suppose that the coaches were trying to help him get a pitch with lateral/diagonal movement and they could not accomplish that his current delivery mechanics. So they had him drop his arm angle. I don't believe that is really what he did. I believe that the more accurate description was that he reduced his side bend. So in relationship to his body the angle did not drop but it did drop in relationship to the ground. The advantage is that he reduced potential risk to his lumbar spine. The result is that the release point changed.
First consequence is not whether he would have an effective new pitch. It is that all of his other pitches would react differently from the new release point. So the fastball would be different as would the change-up. You would in effect have a new pitcher seeking to put together an arsenal of pitches given his current (new) release point.
Me, personally, not what I would have done for a million reasons.
But to suggest the obvious, (but obviously not obvious to the coaches), I would have done to him what golf coaches do to their professional golfers who have an extraordinary amount of right side lateral bend, I would have tried first to change the area of the spine in which the bend occurs -- from lumbar to thoracic spine, which is designed to handle side bend and not just flexion and extension (which is what the lumbar can do). I would point out to the readership who is familiar with golf that this is in fact what Viktor Hovland has done, but not what Juaquin Niemann has done.
The impact on Hovland was interesting because while it had little impact on his ability to hit his irons well, it did impact the accuracy of his driving and that part of his game suffered leading to lesser finishes. It improved after he went to see a different coach, someone I know and with whom I have worked briefly, Dana Dahlquist (also DeChambeau's coach), who is kind of expert on driving in particular. He straightened out the problem and Hovland won the Travelers in my state of CT. But it is still a work in progress.
OK. That would have been the solution I adopted. Don't change the release point: change the bend point in the spine.
Changing the release point changes everything. While it opens up opportunities for new pitches, it changes all the ones you currently throw correctly and with great success.
I still think the right approach for someone as far along and who has done what he has for so long is to work on getting the bend fhrough the thoracic spine and seeing how much bend you can get and stay as close to the previous release point as possible.
Continuation of response:
This would not have solved the issue of getting another pitch added to the arsenal.
So that problem would have remained, but it would not have caused the mess we are seeing now.
And while I am not a pitching coach of any sort, I would have recommended experimenting with 3 pitches that can be thrown from the old release point. He already had a curve but it was 12/6 and also not sharp breaking. Sandy Koufax would have been my model because while he had a 12/6 curveball it was remarkably sharp breaking.
The limit of adding even a successful curve ball would have been that Tong would have remained basically a two speed pitcher as the curve and the change-up are usually around the same or similar speed. I don't think a slider would have been an effective alternative, but a cutter could have because the problem with his fastball was that it was primarily flat. A cutter changes that and can also be thrown at slower than 4 seam speed. Any 2 seamer would have been my starting point.
So what to do now.
You cannot leave him where he is now, because that would make everyone a loser. Right now he has no pitch that is the anchor off of which he can work hitters. It was always his fastball, especially high in the zone.
So, I would send him to a movement specialist after the season ends at AAA and get him back to his original release point with lateral bend but the bend coming from the thoracic spine. This will also require other body adjustments that are necessary but not difficult or painful. Just require build up and repeating over. Then I would get into a throwing schedule, first on the fastball so he can recapture it and own it, then on the changeup and only then explore a breaking ball, a 2 seam fastball and a cutter
This will save his back (not if he doesn't work on the complementary changes that go along with bending from the thoracic and its impact on the lower rib cage), help him regain his two most important pitches and still give him the opportunity to work on additional, lower usage pitches). If he doesn't develop a third average or better pitcher, he may very well end up the closer.
'average or better pitch' not pitcher.
I like to use Manaea for comparison. When he changed his arm angle, it affected all of his pitches, BUT IN A FAVORABLE WAY. Not so Tong. On the other hand, Manaea did not work on the complementary body development moves (e.g. impact on obliques) and so ended up injured. Not so Tong. While he got worse response from his pitches, he lowered injury risk. But now he is nowhere near as effective as a pitcher. So the issue is NOT to have him go back to where he was. IT IS TO HAVE HIM GO BACK TO HIS PREVIOUS RELEASE POINT AND TO HAVE SIDE BEND, BUT NOT FROM THE LUMBAR SPINE. IT MUST COME FROM THE THORACIC SPINE. AND HE WILL HAVE TO WORK ON STRENGTHENING THE AREAS THAT ARE IMPACTED BY THIS CHANGE. BECAUSE THE BEND MOVES UP IN HIS BODY, THE OTHER PARTS OF HIS BODY THAT WILL BE AFFECTED WILL BE HIS LOWER RIB CAGE, NOT HIS CORE. GET THE MOVEMENT CHANGE CORRECT, THEN DO THE WORKOUTS AND GET BACK TO PITCHING FROM YOUR STRENGTH. SEE WHAT PITCHES IF ANY YOU CAN ADD THAT COMPLEMENT YOUR TWO TOP PITCHES.
I say all this with some confidence about how it would be done in any other sport. I don't know what was done by the Mets staff, I assume it was done in good faith, but I am not confident that it was based on a foundation in movement patterns and knowledge of side bend differences, etc. etc.
Anyone who wants to know more can ask me or people who know even more about movement patterns and how to change them than I do.
The two guys on the Mets I spotted a year ago as having movement pattern issues that should have been and could still be addressed are Tong and Alvarez, two of the players sitting on loads of potential. It would a shame to lose that potential in either of them.
We need Tong too have a 20 Mule Team thorax.
That's definitely one way to think about it :-)
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