Jonah Tong discusses his journey from Canada to rising Mets pitching prospect
Growing up in Markham, Ontario, Jonah Tong was scrolling through a newspaper, trying to decide what sport to join. He noticed a local T-ball and softball league and told his mother that was what he wanted to do. While not avidly following Major League Baseball as a young kid, living just under half an hour from Toronto, his first experience at big league games was going to watch the Blue Jays.
"It wasn’t until I was growing up in my public school into high school years, when I started to more closely follow Major League Baseball," said Tong, whose recent success earned him a promotion to the Brooklyn Cyclones at the end of April.
And a potential future in professional baseball wasn’t the right-hander’s focus until after high school graduation.
"It's always in the back of your head where it's measuring yourself against the other guys, especially in the Canadian circuit," Tong explained in an interview with SNY. "I was more focused on trying to get to college, and then once I finished with Georgia (Premier Academy) and I was going to the MLB Draft League, I thought it could be a real possibility."
Tong graduated high school in 2021 and with the COVID-19 season giving him an extra year before he attended North Dakota State, he took a trip to Arizona and decided he needed to have a conversation with his family about leaving Canada. He explained that he had to be somewhere else to really try to pursue baseball. That somewhere else ended up being the Georgia Premier Academy.
Tong had a friend who attended Georgia Premier, and followed the academy on Twitter (now X) to see highlights. He ended up receiving a direct message from the academy asking if he wanted to play baseball there. "Sure, why not?" was his response, and that sparked the conversation to get Tong down to Georgia for more baseball training.
This eventually led to an invite to the MLB Draft League for the 2022 campaign, where he played for the Frederick Keys in Maryland. While Tong rated highly in the league when it came to some of the advanced pitch metrics, his performances in games were not as strong. In 11.2 innings he posted a 10.80 ERA, allowing 14 hits and 10 walks, while striking out 14 batters.
"I got my teeth kicked in a little bit," Tong said with a laugh. "Obviously the results weren’t great, and I wasn’t happy with that, but it was the first time I was able to see what my pitches were actually doing. It helped me to understand what type of pitcher I needed to be moving forward."
Scouts and advanced player development systems are primarily hunting traits when evaluating amateur talent. If you can combine that with high-end amateur in-game performance, that’s great. What the Mets and their area scout Marlin McPhail saw was a raw piece of clay that could be molded by the team’s pitching development system.
Fast forward to the 2022 MLB Draft, where Tong was eligible to be taken, but would have to be signed away from his college commitment. It wasn’t until a couple of days prior to the draft that he thought he might get picked. Up until then, he had it in his head he would be at North Dakota State.
On Day 2, he was in Los Angeles in the Dodgers concourse with a couple of friends from the MLB Draft League waiting for All-Star festivities to begin. He knew the Mets were one of the teams interested in him.
"I originally got a call from Marlin McPhail, who just wanted to check in on me and see how I was doing," Tong said. "I got a call in the sixth round saying that I might go this round, then got the call two picks before the Mets pick in the sixth round saying, 'Maybe the next round.'" The reason was that the Mets had Southern Mississippi right-hander Tyler Stuart fall into their laps, and he was willing to sign in the sixth round, pushing Tong down.
"Then I got the call in the seventh round, and the rest is history."
The Mets signed Tong for the full slot value of the No. 209 pick at $226,000.
One of the more recently talked about Mets player development topics is the pitching lab that was built in Port St. Lucie. While Tong himself hasn’t spent a ton of time there, he described it as "a mound with a bunch of motion capture cameras around you. Driveline has a very good example of one, and I would say it is very similar to that."
In 2023, Tong was getting his feet wet in pro ball and made 10 appearances (eight starts) between the rookie level Florida Complex League Mets and Low-A St. Lucie. He struck out 38 batters across 21 innings, although it came with a 6.00 ERA and 22 walks. He knew as he went into the offseason, something had to change in 2024.
This year has been an entirely different story thus far. As of Monday, in 23.2 innings split between Low-A St. Lucie and most recently High-A Brooklyn, Tong has not surrendered an earned run and allowed only nine hits and eight walks while striking out 43. He worked with the complex pitching coach Garrett Baker on his practice and bullpen design.
"Probably the biggest thing that has helped him is his openness to learn and continuously be challenged," Mets pitching and performance integration coordinator Kyle Rogers told SNY. "He’s developed routines and learned how to attack his work like a professional every day."
Tong is known for his fastball that will sit at 93-94 mph, topping out at 97 while with St. Lucie. He led the Florida State League in average induced vertical break on his fastball at 20.5", which would be an elite number even in the major leagues.
He credited being able to get that vertical break in part due to his arm slot in his over-the-top delivery. "My trunk tilts and I am able to literally be directly over-the-top. Sometimes on a spin tilt it looks like I am throwing lefty fastballs, which is pretty cool."
Tong also has an old school 12-to-6 curve that he naturally has the feel to spin. He has worked on developing a hard slider that’s almost a cutter-like pitch, and he also has a changeup that right now is primarily used as a weapon against left-handed hitters that he is still fine-tuning.
Tong may not have made my preseason Top 30 prospect list in spring training, but he has emerged as one of the more exciting under-the-radar arms in the system, who will find his way onto Mets prospect lists if he continues on this trajectory.
