This Promising Mets Starter Had A Lost Season

The New York Mets had a lost season, and one of the reasons was that they managed to coach one of their young starters into a similar result. Right-hander Jonah Tong showed his enormous potential when he came up late in 2025, and he should have spent most of the year with the Mets at Citi Field working out his issues, especially when it became obvious that the Mets were out of contention for good.

Instead, Tong spent most of his season flailing at Triple-A Syracuse. A lot of it was about the coaching, too, in an interesting piece from Robert Colonna of Metsmerizedonline.com in which he did a report card giving Tong a B-. 

The interesting stuff was in the details, however, as Colonna took a deep dive into exactly what happened to Tong. Per the writer, Tong came into spring training with the goal of adding a horizontal breaking ball so he could force his way onto the big league roster. 

Instead, Tong wound up tinkering with a variety of pitches that didn’t work, including multiple versions of cutters, sliders and curve balls as well as multiple sinkers and two seamers that had different pitch shapes. 

The key pitcher, per Colonna, was the curve, which is the one that gets Tong swings and misses because he throws it at around 80 mph. Tong’s big issue was home runs, and Colonna also noted that the right-hander’s arm slot was all over the place. 

A lot of this speaks to poor coaching, which is becoming a Mets trademark under GM David Stearns. The Mets have layers and layers of coaches, and for players like Tong, finding a clear and trustworthy voice becomes very difficult. It surfaced last year with the firing of the coaching staff, and now it’s happening again this year.  

There is one encouraging sign for Tong going forward, however. Tong came to camp this year with increased velocity, and he did the same thing the year before. That could be his path to a spot in the rotation, given that he’s just 23. 

Another issue with the Mets is that they can’t seem to decide whether Tong is a starter or a reliever. They brought him up in 2025 as a starter, then used him in relief in the middle of this season, which can’t be helping with Tong’s development. If the Mets don’t know who and what he is, how exactly is Tong supposed to figure that out on his own?