Jonah Tong may have talked his way back into the Mets’ plans the hard way: by piling up enough good innings that the club can’t ignore him anymore.
A couple of weeks ago, that didn’t look likely. On Aug. 17, Mets interim manager Andy Green sounded pretty clear about where Tong belonged.
“He’s still grinding, still getting better, still working, so [Triple-A] is the right spot for him right now,” Green said. But . . .
“That could change.”
And it has.
With active major-league rosters expanding to 28 players on Tuesday, the timing suddenly lines up for a contender to bring up help. The Mets aren’t in that kind of chase, but Tong has forced the conversation anyway. What once looked like a questionable idea now looks a lot more reasonable because he’s put together a stretch that demands attention.
The numbers still don’t scream success at first glance. Tong owns a 4.54 ERA in 23 starts for Triple-A Syracuse. Two weeks ago, that figure sat at 6.11, which tells you how far he’s come in a short time.
The recent run has been much better. On Saturday, he came within one out of a no-hitter in a seven-inning game before allowing a single.
Over his last eight starts, he has a 2.20 ERA, even with an Aug. 5 outing that went sideways fast - five runs and five homers in five innings. Just as important, the walks have come down.
He has issued only two in each of his last three appearances.
That kind of improvement matters to the Mets, and not just because of the results. Green made it clear last month that he values promotions that feel earned rather than handed out to fill a roster spot.
“You want people to feel like they earn the right to be on the field,” Green said, pointing to the trio of young pitchers making up the bulk of the Mets’ rotation. “I think all these [young pitchers] here, one reason they’re performing well is they’ve all earned the right to be here.”
Tong is starting to do exactly that, and he’s doing it the difficult way.
Last year in Double-A, he got by mostly with his fastball and his “Vulcan grip’’ changeup. That worked well enough at lower levels, but it’s a tougher formula for a major-league starter, something he showed when he was called up late in 2025 and posted a 7.71 ERA, even while flashing moments of real dominance.
This season was supposed to be about growth, and growth in baseball rarely moves in a straight line. Sometimes it looks messy before it looks better. Tong expanded his repertoire, dropped his arm slot a little lower and spent plenty of time sorting through the consequences of all that tinkering.
The results were rough for a while. Then they were rough some more.
Now there’s at least some proof he may have come out the other side, and that’s the part the Mets should care about. It speaks to the work he’s put in, and it also says something about the mental edge the organization wants to see from its young arms.
That was on display Sunday in the Mets’ 6-3 loss to the Astros, when Zac Thornton shook off a Jeremy Pena homer on his third pitch and later escaped a bases-loaded jam in the second. Thornton, a soft-tossing lefty who has to live on the margin, finished with two runs allowed, six hits, no walks and five strikeouts in five innings despite not having his best stuff.
Tong, by contrast, is the kind of player who tends to wear his emotions. There were times in 2025 when he showed plenty of frustration after tough starts, and that led some to wonder about his resilience.
But it’s a mistake to think emotion and toughness can’t coexist. Tong has already had to absorb a difficult major-league introduction and then navigate the season that followed.
He was promoted in May, and in his last major-league appearance, he allowed five runs, four earned, in 3 1⁄3 innings.
If the Mets want to see what he looks like now, this is about as forgiving a spot as they’ll get. These games don’t carry the same weight, and one bad outing in September is not the same thing as one in the middle of a pennant race.
Green sounded at least open to the idea by Sunday. He had seen three innings of Tong’s one-hitter before getting pulled away by other responsibilities, and he liked what he saw.
“I think we’re glad to see those results from Jonah,” he said. “It looked like up to that point in time [that I had watched], his fastball had real life, which is really encouraging. He was winning at the top of the zone, the ball was really jumping out of his hands and he’s doing some really nice things.”
So is a return coming?
“That is definitely not unseen,” Green said. “It definitely becomes a discussion point for David [Stearns], myself and other people. Encouraging outing for him for sure.”
That much is certain. Tong has done enough to make this a real conversation. Now it’s just a matter of whether the Mets decide the bigger stage is the right next step.
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