At age 14, Jonah Tong wanted to chase his baseball dreams as an outfielder. He told his coach with the Toronto Mets that he did not care to pitch because he was having so much fun hitting.
“Yeah,” Rich Leitch told him, “but you’re not very good at it.”
“But I’m still the best defensive outfielder that we’ve got,” Tong shot back.
The kid had a point. Leitch loved his arm and athleticism and the way he tracked a fly ball. But in the end, the travel-team coach saw something in this small, skinny boy that assured him he belonged on the mound.
A few years later, Leitch said one report ranked Tong, then a 160-pound 12th-grader, as the 57th-best player in Ontario.
“I don’t know what those 56 kids ranked ahead of him are doing Friday night,” Leitch told The Athletic, “but I know they are not pitching against the Marlins at Citi Field.”
Tong’s journey from the Toronto Mets to the New York Mets was a wildly improbable one. North Dakota State and Maine were the only Division I schools that offered him out of high school in 2021. Tong ultimately committed to North Dakota State, took a gap year, and then developed so much during that year that the Mets grabbed him in the seventh round of the 2022 MLB Draft, with the 209th pick.
I don’t know what those 208 kids picked ahead of him are doing Friday night, but I know they won’t be trying to give the Mets and their fans another explosive jolt of hope that this season could end in a way that none has since 1986.
Nolan McLean provided that first jolt with his historic 3-0 start, after the Mets spent too much of the summer trying to wreck what had been a 45-24 record. McLean, at 24, looks very much like a man. He’s built like someone who should’ve been included in that package the Green Bay Packers just sent to the Dallas Cowboys for Micah Parsons.
Tong? Though he’s added 25 pounds on the road to the big leagues, he is still 22 going on 18.
“Talking to him,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said through a laugh, “he’s a kid, you know?”
A kid who called his mother the other day to tell her he was being promoted to The Show, and then spent the next hour crying his eyes out.
Jonah Tong says he was “bawling for an hour” after telling his mother that he’d been promoted to the Mets pic.twitter.com/vSFjY7l7ub
— SNY Mets (@SNY_Mets) August 28, 2025
The Mets have won only two World Series titles in their 63-year existence, but they are really good at this kind of thing. From Nolan Ryan to Nolan McLean, from Tom Seaver to Doc Gooden to Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom, they know how to sell hope in the form of promising young arms. They know how to identify, acquire and develop pitchers who can make their beleaguered fans believe something magical is in the making.
Some pitching classes fare better than others. The Generation K trio of Bill Pulsipher, Jason Isringhausen and Paul Wilson struck out in the 1990s. A couple of decades later, Harvey, deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz and Zack Wheeler tried their damnedest and failed to win a ring in New York.
Now it’s McLean and Tong, the most prolific strikeout pitcher in all the minor leagues, who embody the possibilities in front of the Mets in what should be a wide-open October tournament. Brandon Sproat is waiting on deck in Syracuse. Meanwhile, McLean has essentially nailed down a front-of-the-rotation spot for the balance of the season.
In a worst-case scenario, Tong could be a one-and-done starter who is sent back down.
But then again, he fanned 179 batters in 113 2/3 innings and posted a 1.43 ERA in 22 minor-league starts for a reason. Soon after McLean got drafted in 2023, he stood at the plate during a bullpen session to find out what his fellow right-hander had in his bag. From Tong’s over-the-top, Tim Lincecum-like delivery, McLean saw a fastball that moved and jumped on top of him unlike any he’d seen before.
“I can’t imagine being a hitter having to face him with the unique delivery that he has, as well as his mid-to-upper 90s (fastball),” McLean said.
Jonah Tong’s over-the-top delivery, combined with a live fastball, makes it tough for hitters to see what he’s throwing. (Nick Cammett / Diamond Images via Getty Images)
This was the force that Tyler Oakes was counting on to become North Dakota State’s most potent thrower since Carson Wentz. After the news of Tong’s promotion from Triple A to Queens became official, his would-be college coach tweeted, “Let’s go! Big time @tong_jonah! Couldn’t happen to a better person!”
Tong lived a whole lot closer to Orono, Maine, than Fargo, N.D., but his relationship with Oakes made his college decision for him. Of course, Oakes had his heart broken when his most compelling recruiting story — finding the raw, undervalued Tong through his vast Canadian connections — ended with the Mets stealing him away.
Oakes recalled driving to Montana on a recruiting trip on Day 2 of the MLB Draft when the news broke that his guy was selected in the seventh round. He knew it was over. He knew Tong had to take the life-changing deal the Mets were offering, because as an undrafted free-agent pitcher in his day, Oakes, who spent a year in the Tampa Bay organization, would have done the same thing.
“Jonah is an awesome kid who wants to be the best of the best. He wants to be great at everything,” Oakes said. “He watches video of successful major-league pitchers, and his ability to absorb information and implement it into his game is huge. A lot of players watch video and listen to coaching but can’t process the information and implement it. When Jonah tries to do something that he’s seen or heard, he’s able to do it.”
Jonah Tong throws at Citi Field pic.twitter.com/WN8C6QunxV
— SNY (@SNYtv) August 28, 2025
Back in his teenage Toronto Mets days, Tong’s velocity gradually grew from 81 mph to 85, and then to 87, and then to 90. He sprayed it around a bit too much, and those command issues, along with his size, compelled the big showcase events and the coaches who assembled Canada’s national junior team to ignore him.
“When I had him at age 17,” Leitch said, “people in baseball circles in Canada probably would’ve said Jonah was our sixth-best pitcher. There were five Division 1 arms ahead of him. But one thing we kept hearing from hitters was, ‘We can’t see what he’s throwing.’ Jonah had that funky over-the-top delivery, and guys just couldn’t see it.”
Deception didn’t turn out to be his only lethal weapon. On one particular Monday night in the middle of February, Leitch was working with his hitters indoors when someone mentioned he should take a look at how hard Tong was throwing.
“I put the gun on him, and it said 96 mph,” Leitch recalled. “And Jonah just said, ‘PR … PR’ (for personal record). People made the comparison to Lincecum, who was called ‘The Freak.’ I started to think maybe Jonah was a freak, too.”
It’s stunning how many college coaches and pro scouts missed on Tong because he didn’t look the part of the classic 6-5, 220-pound ace. Leitch tells the story of how Tong wanted to study actuarial mathematics and play baseball as a walk-on at a certain college that would’ve cost $40,000 a year out of his own pocket — and the school’s coach turned him down.
Though he won’t identify that coach out of respect for their friendship, Leitch said the man texted him the other day with this message: “Man, I’m the biggest idiot in the coaching world.”
That’s OK; just about every American evaluator not named Tyler Oakes failed to see the phenom inside the prospect known as the Canadian Cannon. Thursday afternoon, the Mets sent an email to fans, pumping up the arrival of The Next Big Thing. Friday night, Leitch will join a party of colleagues to watch Tong go against another former Toronto Met, Miami Marlins catcher Liam Hicks.
“The good news,” Leitch joked, “is that Jonah isn’t pitching in a tough market.”
In a predictable letdown wedged between their sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies and Tong’s debut, the Mets lost a ballgame to the Marlins on Thursday night by a 7-4 count. They are still four games ahead of the Cincinnati Reds for the final wild-card spot with 28 games to play. They should be OK.
And chances are, New York is going to eat up the Mets’ latest addition to the staff, No. 21 in your program. Tong promised to go out there and be himself before adding, “I’m confident that’s going to be enough.”
So are those who watched Tong evolve from a tiny outfielder who couldn’t hit to a pitching freak who will try to validate the Mets as a true October threat.
(Top photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
