Per Will Sammon of The Athletic, the New York Mets are recalling Jonah Tong from Triple-A Syracuse ahead of today’s game against the Miami Marlins. It is unclear how many, if any, innings they are hoping for in the series opener from Tong, as Tobias Myers will be starting the game. It is also unclear if they are looking to stretch out Myers into a full-time starter.
Tong is coming off his worst appearance of his season on May 14, where he did not make it out of the second inning. This means he will be pitching on seven days rest. Before that blowup outing, he had a four-game stretch where he threw 21 innings to a 2.57 ERA and 1.10 WHIP with a 33.7% strikeout rate.
Tong has been incredibly uneven this season with a 5.68 ERA and 1.37 WHIP. He has had three starts where he gave up sixteen runs in eight innings for an 18.00 ERA and 2.88 WHIP. His other six starts for Syracuse, he gave up only eight runs in thirty innings for a 2.40 ERA and 0.97 WHIP. His two worst starts came against the same team, the Somerset Patriots. Tong’s biggest struggles have come from his 1.89 HR/9 rate. Per Baseball America, Syracuse was one of the more home run-friendly ballparks in MiLB in 2025, and it is possible that is the same this year.
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Tong has struggled with command at times while working on developing a pitch with horizontal break. He has been incredibly inconsistent with the break on his cutter and it seems he may have been displaying a new slider recently.
There have been some positives with Tong, who is still only 22-years-old. His fastball in Triple-A ran a 28.7% whiff rate and 29.6% chase rate. When he commands it, that pitch can dominate. When he leaves it over the heart of the zone, though, it gets crushed. Similarly, his changeup has generated significant swing and miss with a 40.3% whiff and is a strong pairing with the fastball when he can locate it. He is throwing his curveball a lot harder than in 2025 and with more spin, though with less vertical movement and more horizontal movement. It is by no means a plus or even necessarily average pitch, but the results have been better so far when he locates it.
Kimbrel, meanwhile, pitched 15 innings to a 6.00 ERA and 1.47 WHIP for the Mets. He flashed plus-stuff metrics in his time with the club, but his inability to locate his pitches hurt him too much to be effective. His biggest contribution may have come from his last appearance on Wednesday, where he saved the bullpen by throwing 2.2 innings, which kept everyone fresh for the Mets’ win in the final game of the Nationals series.
