The Minor Leagues’ most effective pitcher this season is getting his shot at the Majors.
The 22-year-old right-hander leads Minor League full-season qualifiers with 179 strikeouts as well as a 1.43 ERA, .148 average-against, 40.5 percent strikeout rate, 29.9 K-BB% and 1.66 FIP over 113 2/3 innings at Double-A Binghamton and Triple-A Syracuse this season. His 0.92 WHIP places second among that group of 196 pitchers. He’s allowed only two homers all season for a 0.2 HR/9 that ranks fifth.
Tong just debuted at the Minors’ top level on Aug. 16 and made only a pair of starts for Syracuse before this ascension. Both were scoreless, and he continued to keep the punchouts coming with 17 over 11 2/3 frames.
The Ontario native – nicknamed The Canadian Cannon – has shown the stuff to back up the results.
Using a trademark over-the-top delivery and above-average extension from a 6-foot-1 frame, Tong has heard ample Tim Lincecum comps over the years. He regularly blows by hitters with a 94-97 mph four-seam fastball with exceptional ride at the top of the zone (i.e. 18-19 inches of induced vertical break on average). Between Double-A and Triple-A, Tong has generated a whiff rate of 36.5 percent against his four-seamer; the MLB average on such a pitch is 21.4 percent.
The movement alone would make it a killer pitch – it can look like a laser designed to stay above barrels out of the hand – but Tong has added extra heat to that fastball in just the last year, making it all the more effective in the upper levels and helping him maintain his K-heavy ways against more experienced bats.
“My dad always told me, ‘Don’t go sidearm,’” he said of his mechanics for the MLB Pipeline Pitching Lab series last year. “So I think it was one of those things where I just [wanted to] see if I can throw overhand and see if he says anything. He didn’t really say anything because he was just coming off of work. After that point, I was messing around for so long that it started slowly ticking up.”
But the pitch that has taken the biggest jump in 2025 is Tong’s changeup.
Using a Vulcan-style grip that places the ball between his middle and ring fingers, the righty continued to toy with the placement of the ball in his hand before landing on one that has helped him generate more drop on the offering. The changeup — which sits at 84-87 mph with 13-14 inches of armside movement — is now Tong’s most-oft-used secondary, one he threw 31.5 percent of the time with Syracuse. The pitch comes with roughly 18 more inches of drop now than the fastball, and with about 10 mph of velo separation, Tong can generate a ton of swing-and-miss on the pitch, even in the zone.
With the improvements in Tong’s changeup, he’s been just as dominant against lefties (.134/.232/.210 over 177 plate appearances) as he’s been against righties (.156/.250/.187 in 265 PA) in 2025.
That said, the other pitches haven’t taken a complete back seat. Tong’s upper-70s curveball breaks sharply downward and can give him a north-south feeling with the way it plays off the riding fastball. He can also tuck in a harder 85-87 mph short slider for something moving away from same-side bats.
Tong’s 10.6 percent walk rate is a touch higher than many top pitching prospects, but the fact that he handled his transition to the MLB ball at Triple-A by walking only three in his two Syracuse starts was rather encouraging, considering many other pitchers struggle with the jump from Double-A to Triple-A for that reason.
COMPLETE METS PROSPECT COVERAGE
On pure stuff alone, Tong would slot comfortably in the Top 100 prospect rankings, and the results would take him into the upper echelon. However given his frame and unorthodox mechanics, some scouts and evaluators have questioned whether he could maintain this arsenal and health over a longer period as compared to some of his top pitching prospect peers, noting Lincecum’s steep dropoff after his age-27 season.
Those will be issues worth monitoring down the line. What the Mets are getting now is a top Minor League arm who has only just met his innings total from 2024 (113 innings) and should have enough left in the tank for the stretch run as the club attempts to hold onto a National League Wild Card spot. They’ve already seen the electricity fellow rookie righty Nolan McLean (MLB Pipeline’s No. 37 overall prospect) can bring to the rotation, and another spark couldn’t hurt.
Taken in the seventh round of the 2022 Draft, Tong has been one of the Mets’ best developmental stories in recent years. Originally slated to head to North Dakota State, he used experiences at Georgia Premier Academy and the MLB Draft League to vault into Draft discussions and signed with New York for slot money at $226,000.
Three short years later, he’s New York City-bound.
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