{"id":122557,"date":"2026-05-23T16:14:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T20:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=122557"},"modified":"2026-05-23T16:14:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T20:14:20","slug":"how-mets-use-jonah-tong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/05\/23\/how-mets-use-jonah-tong\/","title":{"rendered":"How Mets Could Use Jonah Tong in Return to Majors"},"content":{"rendered":"

After being cut from the New York Mets camp<\/a> in March, Jonah Tong<\/a> is back in the Majors. Tong, who was named the Minor League Pitching Prospect of the Year and Baseball America’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2025, at just 22-years-old, was promoted to Major League Baseball for the second time already in his young career.<\/p>\n

Tong, who is the Mets’ No. 2-ranked prospect, according to MLB Pipeline, made his season debut in Miami against the Miami Marlins on Friday and hurled three hitless and scoreless innings out of the bullpen, striking out two and walking one in the Mets’ 2-1 loss. According to The Athletic’s Will Sammon, Tong will stay at the major league level as a reward for his performance and will make his next appearance for New York on Wednesday against the Cincinnati Reds.<\/p>\n

How the Mets Could Utilize Tong<\/h2>\n

As currently listed publicly, the Mets will start Freddy Peralta<\/a> on Saturday and Christian Scott<\/a> on Sunday. If the rotation, as currently constructed, remains the same, Nolan McLean<\/a> should start on Monday<\/a>, and David Peterson<\/a>, who recently returned to the rotation, would get the start on Tuesday. That leaves Wednesday without a starter. The Mets called up pitching prospect Zach Thornton<\/a> in response to Clay Holmes<\/a> going on the 60-day injured list (fibula)<\/a>, but demoted him a couple of days after making his MLB debut in Washington to re-call reliever Jonathan Pintaro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n

Tong relieved Tobias Myers<\/a> after just 1 1\/3 innings on Friday. The Mets could do something similar to that or have Tong start the game. To make room for him on the active roster, the Mets designated 37-year-old and likely future Hall of Famer Craig Kimbrel<\/a> for assignment. In 14 appearances (15 innings) out of the bullpen, Kimbrel held a 6.00 ERA.<\/p>\n

In nine starts at Triple-A Syracuse before his promotion, Tong pitched to a 5.68 ERA. In three of those starts, Tong was tagged for 16 earned runs. In the other six, he allowed three earned runs or fewer. Out of desperation in 2025, the Mets rushed Tong up to the majors in late August. It was evident as the right-hander struggled in five starts, producing a poor ERA of 7.71.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Main Photo Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After being cut from the New York Mets camp in March, Jonah Tong is back in the Majors. Tong, who was named the Minor League Pitching Prospect of the Year and Baseball America’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2025, at just 22-years-old, was promoted to Major League Baseball for the second time already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5706,"featured_media":122581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,22,35],"tags":[28476,5566,323,1332,2514,29121,29552,3753,28490,29551],"class_list":["post-122557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-mets","category-news","tag-christian-scott","tag-clay-holmes","tag-craig-kimbrel","tag-david-peterson","tag-freddy-peralta","tag-jonah-tong","tag-jonathan-pintaro","tag-nolan-mclean","tag-tobias-myers","tag-zach-thornton"],"modified_by":"Augustus Oswald, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122557"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122583,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122557\/revisions\/122583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}