September 21, 2022

By Kevin Glew

Canadian Baseball Network

Over the past few years, Jonah Tong would sometimes huddle around a screen in his basement in Markham, Ont., with his dad, Alex, to study video of New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom.

Together they would dissect the two-time National League Cy Young Award winner’s mechanics.

So, it’s hard for Tong to believe that he’s now toeing the rubber in the same organization as deGrom.

“He was one of my favourite pitchers growing up,” said Tong in a recent phone interview. “It’s kind of surreal knowing that I’m where he used to be.”

Where Tong is right now is at the Mets’ development complex in Port St. Lucie, Fla., after being selected by them in the seventh round of the 2022 MLB draft. The 19-year-old right-hander has not yet met deGrom.

“I’m making that one of my goals in spring training,” said Tong with a chuckle.

The last six months have been a whirlwind for Tong, who has blossomed into one of Canada’s top pitching prospects. Now 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, Tong was always one of the smallest boys in his class during his childhood and into his teens. But he grew up in an athletic and ambitious family. His father was a hockey and volleyball player, who met his mother, Karen, a standout in volleyball, field hockey and softball in high school, while playing in a recreational slo-pitch league. Tong’s eldest sister, Montana, was a catcher on her varsity high school baseball team and his other older sister, Morgan, earned a gymnastics scholarship to Central Michigan University.

Tong says his interest in baseball can be traced back to an ad he saw in a local newspaper when he was four.

“I picked up a newspaper [at home] and the first ad I saw in the paper was about Unionville T-ball and I said, ‘Hey, mom and dad, can I join this?’ And they looked at each other and said, ‘Absolutely!’” recalled Tong.

Tong played T-ball and house league in Unionville, Ont., before moving on to the Markham District Baseball Association when he was nine. Still very small, he tried out for the competitive Mosquito level team (ages 10 and 11) three times before he finally made it.

He ended up playing with the Markham Mariners, under coach Michael Whalen, until he was 15.

“Jonah was one of our smaller players,” recalled Whalen, when asked about his first impressions of Tong. “And not only just small, but skinny small . . . He just wasn’t powerful at all, either with his arm or his bat.”

But Whalen worked with Tong and he says what the youngster lacked in size, he made up for with heart and a commitment to improve.

“He was my most consistent pitcher, but he wasn’t fast. He didn’t blow kids away,” recalled Whalen. “We were playing triple-A, so we saw the big teams in Ontario and there were pitchers throwing 10, 20 miles per hour faster than Jonah every year. Jonah just gave me strikes.”

At a young age, Tong also had a variety of pitches and Whalen says there were physical signs that Tong was going to become more of a force on the mound.

“The one thing I probably saw was he had big hands, so you knew the growth was going to come,” said Whalen.

And Whalen loved Tong’s personality.

“He smiled a lot and he just loves playing the game,” said Whalen.

When Tong started at Bill Crothers Secondary School in Unionville, Ont., he was under five feet tall. Whalen, who’s a teacher at the school, can vouch for that.

Bill Crothers is a student athlete focused high school. To level the playing field against neighboring schools, athletes are forbidden from playing their primary sport, so Tong could not compete on the high school baseball team.

Near the start of secondary school is when Tong became more serious about baseball and he decided to join the Toronto Mets elite program.

Rich Leitch, the Toronto Mets vice-president and director of baseball, coached Tong in his first season with the organization and he says Tong was about 120 pounds as a 15-year-old.

“He was a Markham kid that came in, kind of as an outfielder who pitched a little bit,” recalled Leitch. “But the bat was just under water. And he knew it, too.”

After that 15U season, the Mets broke it to Tong that his future was as a pitcher.

“I played in a couple of tournaments and I was never known for my hitting, but I was always a decent fielder and that fall, it was kind of just like, you’re going to pitch more than you’re going to hit from now on,” recalled Tong. “It was the kind of thing where I knew when I moved on to the other age groups that I wasn’t going to be able to hit.”

With his focus on pitching in his 16U year, the Mets began thinking that they might have something special in Tong. Leitch can recall a conversation with fellow Mets coach Geoff Whent.

“Geoff said to me, ‘This kid’s going to throw 90.’ And I was like, ‘That little guy?’ And Geoff was like, ‘I’m telling you, ‘This kid is going to throw 90,’” recalled Leitch.

Leitch says Tong’s velocity improved to 83 to 85 mph in his 16U season and it helped that the young righty threw from a deceptive arm angle.

“He kind of throws from a funky arm slot where it kind of comes out of his ear,” explained Leitch. “It’s over the top, but it’s a shorter arm action, so our hitters were saying it was a really uncomfortable at bat against Jonah even when he was 83-85.”

Whalen says Tong had a significant growth spurt between the end of grade 11 and grade 12.

“Sometime during COVID, he shot up — like completely just grew,” he said.

But Tong, now 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, knows he’ll never be a huge physical presence on the mound and the Mets took this account when putting together a program for him.

“We had to constantly focus on ‘OK listen, you’re never going to be 6-4, 230. Let’s focus on being the strongest 6-1, 175-pound kid you can be,’” said Leitch. “And Jonah did all the stuff. He treated every rep, whether it was every rep in the weight room, whether it was every throw he made, every medicine ball movement that he did . . . He made it the most important thing he was doing that day.”

Tong was really starting to come into his own when the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down, but that didn’t thwart the progress of the determined righty.

“Jonah is really super self-motivated so he took all of the stuff that we told our guys to do during the lockdown and he did it 100 per cent, 100 per cent of the time,” said Leitch. “So he came back and we were like, ‘Wow, this is very impressive.’”

As Whent had predicted, Tong’s velocity was now in the low 90s, but the downfall of the pandemic lockdowns was that Tong hadn’t been seen by a lot of scouts.

Leitch says Tong really started to make a name for himself in the fall of 2021.

“We played West Virginia in our fall trip last year and Jonah was 94, 96 [on the radar gun],” said Leitch.  “Jonah just kept getting better and better every time out.”

Tong credits Leitch and fellow Mets coaches Ryan McBride, Jordan Prosper, Paul Spoljaric and Michael Rodriguez, as well as his dad, for helping his draft stock rise.

In early March, he was asked to join the Langley Blaze for their spring tour through Arizona.

After that, Tong accepted an offer to play with the Georgia Premier Academy, an elite team that Toronto Mets alum Mitch Bratt competed with in 2021.Tong joined them at the end of March and pitched with them until May.

In Georgia, there were plenty of scouts at his games, including Marlin McPhail, the senior area scouting supervisor for the New York Mets. He first saw Tong when Georgia Premier Academy played the P27 Academy near his home at the end of March.

“They [Georgia Premier Academy] were coming to Lexington, South Carolina, which is only about 25 minutes from my house, so I was like, this is perfect,” said McPhail. “I came in with an open mind and I thought Jonah threw well and I talked to him between games for a little while.”

McPhail says there was a lot to like about Tong as a player and a person.

“His delivery was athletic and a little bit different than what you’d normally see taught now,” said McPhail. “He has got a good frame to him and he’s got strength in his lower half.”

McPhail saw Tong pitch six or seven times and grew to appreciate the Canadian’s repertoire.

“He’s got some velocity. He’s got a little action on his fastball,” said McPhail. “And when he gets the release point right, the curveball can be a nice pitch.”

Most of all, McPhail admired Tong’s poise and personality.

“The other thing about Jonah when it boils down to it was, he was an easy kid to get to know,” said McPhail. “If you wanted to talk to him, he gave you the time. He was a very mature, very approachable young man . . . I try not to scout with my heart, but I’ll be honest, he became the type of kid that you just liked period.”

McPhail continued to monitor Tong through the teenage righty’s tenure with the Georgia Premier Academy and then once the Markham native joined the Frederick Keys of the MLB Draft League.

“Pitching in the Draft League was fantastic,” said Tong. “It was kind of my first taste of competing against players who had years of experience on me who came through great programs across the country. I had to try to figure out how to adapt to what it would be like to face these guys on a daily basis.”

Tong got hit around a little in the Draft League, but he also registered 14 strikeouts in 11 2/3 innings and McPhail was impressed with the youngster’s growth – both mentally and physically - on the mound. He convinced the Mets to select Tong in the seventh round of the 2022 MLB draft in July.

But Tong also had a commitment to North Dakota State University, where he had planned to play baseball and obtain an Accounting degree, so it wasn’t a slam dunk that he’d sign with the Mets.

“It was a really hard decision, and it was almost one of those where you had to weigh it out 50/50 because I love school,” said Tong. “School was something I was very passionate about.”

But the Canadian right-hander ultimately elected to sign with the Mets and he has since reported to the Mets development complex in Port St. Lucie, Fla., where he has been throwing bullpens, as well as live BP.

He continues to hone his arsenal which consists of a mid-90s fastball, a curveball, and a changeup.

“My best pitch would be probably my fastball. It’s the pitch I feel most comfortable with. But I also think off-speed wise I have a lot more feel with my curveball right now than I do with my changeup,” he said.

His goal is to pitch for one of the Mets’ affiliates in 2023.

“I’d like to prepare myself as best as possible and I believe I can start out with the Low-A St. Lucie Mets and then keep progressing and see how things go,” said Tong.

In the short term, he’s looking forward to returning to Markham to spend some time with his family, who he is very close to, and his two dogs Hank (a basset hound) and Guigui (a golden retriever).

Tong says without the support of his family, he wouldn’t be where he is today.

And where he is, is pitching in the same organization as deGrom, the two-time Cy Young Award winner he studied so much footage of while huddled around a screen in his basement in Markham with his dad not so long ago.