Tong rebounds with best MLB start to buoy Mets
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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — The Mets‘ projections for the 2025 season did not include asking a 22-year-old prospect to bounce back from a disastrous start and defeat a postseason-bound club in the middle of a heated wild-card race. But that’s where the Mets, attempting to avoid an historic collapse with a $340 million roster, found themselves Thursday against the San Diego Padres.
They needed Jonah Tong, a baby-faced right-hander making his fourth career start, to forget about not surviving the first inning against the Texas Rangers last week and to give them a chance to win. And Tong responded with the best performance of his nascent major league career, holding the Padres to four hits and one unearned run over five innings in the Mets’ 6-1 victory at Citi Field.
The Mets won two of three games in the series and took a two-game lead on the Arizona Diamondbacks for the third and final National League wild-card spot with nine games remaining.
“That’s the guy we saw at the minor league level pretty much the whole year,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said.
Tong was arguably the best pitcher in the minor leagues this season, posting a 1.43 ERA in 113⅔ innings across Double-A and Triple-A. The sheer dominance, combined with injuries and underperformance plaguing New York’s starting rotation, pushed Mets executives to significantly alter their timeline for Tong, who wasn’t even invited to big league camp in spring training, and call him up.
He stumbled in his third outing last Friday against the Rangers, surrendering six earned runs over just two-thirds of an inning, and was visibly emotional postgame. But the Mets did not waver in giving him another opportunity — a testament to both Tong’s talent and the club’s dire situation.
In Tuesday’s series opener against San Diego, the Mets had Sean Manaea, one of their top two projected starters, piggyback Clay Holmes, a converted reliever, in a win. On Wednesday, David Peterson, an All-Star this season, continued his second-half slide by yielding six runs over five innings in a loss.
Meanwhile, Kodai Senga, the Mets’ other projected frontline starter, was scheduled to make his second start with Triple-A Syracuse on Thursday after scuffling so badly since July that he agreed to be optioned to work on his mechanics. Mendoza on Thursday indicated that Senga’s place on the Mets’ postseason roster — should they reach the postseason — is not guaranteed.
“I think we’ll have the conversations and we’ll take the best 13 guys that we feel are going to give us the best chance to win baseball games in October,” Mendoza said.
Tong then took the mound for Thursday’s matinee with a simple emphasis from first pitch: attack hitters. The game plan to accomplish that wound up being a heavier dose of four-seam fastballs. Last week, just 16 of Tong’s 40 pitches were fastballs (40%). On Thursday, 55 of his 82 pitches were fastballs (67%). They averaged 94.4 mph with an elite-level 20-inch induced vertical break from his unorthodox over-the-top delivery. Seven of his eight strikeouts came on the pitch, and he didn’t issue a walk as he threw 59 of his 82 pitches for strikes.
“I threw a lot more strikes,” Tong said. “I just think, from the very first pitch, having the confidence to just attack hitters and I feel like I did a better job of that this time around.”
Said Mendoza: “He got in a rhythm but then he got ahead and then he kept attacking. As opposed to letting hitters get back in counts where he really has to execute pitches. He wasn’t messing around.”
When Tong’s work was officially over, and with the Mets holding 5-1 lead, the oversized videoboard overlooking center field at Citi Field flashed a fact that roused the crowd: Tong became the first Mets pitcher aged 22 or younger to throw eight strikeouts in a game since Noah Syndergaard in 2015. Next, the board showed eight K’s on the strikeout meter down the left-field line, each covered by a red Canadian maple leaf in a nod to Tong’s home country. The crowd roared.
“He was poised the entire day,” said Mets first baseman Pete Alonso, who homered for the fourth straight game in the first inning. “Looked like, from the right off the rip, since I showed up to the yard, he was pretty locked in today. Really stoked for him. Those bounce-back outings are huge for development.”
Tong attempted to minimize the challenge in overcoming last week’s struggle. He recalled having to rebound from a dreadful showing last season when he gave up five runs on four hits and recorded just one out. But that was a High-A matchup between the Brooklyn Cyclones and the Jersey Shore BlueClaws in June. These stakes are miles higher, and the Mets are unexpectedly counting on him in their pursuit of October.
“Every win we can get is huge,” said Mets left fielder Brandon Nimmo, who hit a three-run home run in the third inning. “This is playoff baseball for us, and that’s a playoff team, and I thought we did a really good job against them this season.”
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Paula Lavigne
Florida prosecutors confirmed in a hearing Friday that their key witness in the murder case of a former University of Miami football player is alive and was contacted Thursday by officers where he lives in Kentucky.
ESPN reported Thursday that, despite prosecutors stating July 17 that they tried every effort to locate 81-year-old Paul Conner and had a report from a commercial database he was dead, journalists found Conner alive at his apartment in Louisville.
Conner is the only eyewitness in the case against former Miami football player Rashaun Jones, who is facing second-degree murder charges in the 2006 shooting of teammate Bryan Pata. Jones, who was arrested in 2021, has pleaded not guilty.
Miami assistant state attorney Cristina Diamond told Florida 11th Circuit Court Judge Cristina Miranda that, after the ESPN story was published, her lead detective reached out to police in Louisville and asked them to go to Conner’s last-known address — where ESPN reporters had found him.
“They were able to make contact with Paul Conner. So at this time, what I can tell the court is that Paul Conner is alive,” Diamond said, adding that she had reviewed the officer’s body camera footage. “I think the state needs to do a little bit of further investigation. It appears that he was very confused and is not certain what the case is about.”
When ESPN reporters interviewed Conner on Aug. 25, he said he did not remember details about the case. Miranda had ruled in July that, assuming Conner was dead, the state could present jurors a videotape of prior testimony he gave in 2022 in a bond hearing in the case in lieu of having him testify in person.
If a determination is made that Conner is not competent to testify, she said, “we may still be in the same situation.”
Conner first spoke to police shortly after the Nov. 7, 2006, shooting, and he picked Jones out of a police lineup. Police reinterviewed him in 2020. Conner also recounted what he saw at the 2022 bond hearing and in a 2023 deposition with attorneys.
At the time of the shooting, Conner lived in the same apartment complex as Pata. He said during his 2022 testimony that he heard a “pop” and saw someone “jogging” away from the parking lot entrance near where Pata, a likely high pick in the 2007 NFL draft, was shot once in the head.
How the confirmation of Conner’s status affects the case, which is scheduled for trial Oct. 6, is to be determined after attorneys argued in court Friday about what steps to take next regarding questioning Conner and going over the evidence of the state’s prior efforts to find him.
Jones’ attorney Sara Alvarez told Miranda that she wanted to request a hearing to determine if prosecutors violated the rules of evidence, saying she thought the false conclusion of Conner’s death “may have been intentional.”
Diamond rebutted that accusation, saying Miami-Dade officers made multiple attempts to reach Conner.
“This is our key witness in the case. This is somebody we want,” Diamond told the judge. “The defense is accusing me of making misrepresentations to the court. Every representation made to the court was based upon a conversation with an officer who I was prepared to have testify.”
Diamond was referring to officers from the Louisville Police Department who she said went to Conner’s address over the summer and “spoke to someone but believed it was not the witness.” She said she had a copy of the body camera footage as well. She said those officers told her they also spoke to someone with the apartment’s leasing office who did not find Conner in their records.
She said they did not locate a death certificate in Kentucky but relied on the third-party commercial database that stated Conner was deceased. Jones’ counsel asked for a copy of that report along with other records that would verify the state’s efforts.
The Louisville officers did not testify Friday, as the judge decided to give the attorneys some time to correspond with each other and decide how they wanted to proceed.
ESPN had asked for records or information from the Louisville Police Department regarding efforts to locate Conner, and a department spokesman said there were no records of any officer going to Conner’s address this summer prior to a July 22 request from a former colleague who had called for a welfare check on Conner after being contacted by ESPN reporters.
ESPN made multiple requests to police and the Miami-Dade State Attorney for records of their efforts to find Conner. After initially saying they had no documents, they eventually provided an email exchange in which lead detective Juan Segovia wrote that he left 15 voicemail messages with Conner since May. Segovia added that he also sent emails to an address that officers had used with him previously. They also provided a copy of a June 6 letter addressed to Conner at his Louisville address that asked him to contact their office.
They provided an email exchange with a Louisville police officer, but it had no information about Conner or efforts to find him, and they provided a copy of a subpoena for the officer to testify. ESPN reached back out to Louisville police with the name of the officer and a request for further information and is waiting on a response.
Michigan State wide receiver Nick Marsh and leading rusher Makhi Frazier are expected to play at USC on Saturday night, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel on Friday.
Marsh had a leg injury in last week’s win against Youngstown State, and Frazier suffered a lower-body injury. Both are cleared and in line to play in the Spartans’ Big Ten opener, sources said.
Through three games, Marsh has caught 16 passes for 194 yards and three touchdowns, which is tied for second among Big Ten wide receivers.
Frazier began his sophomore season by rushing for 103 yards and a touchdown on 14 carries in Michigan State’s win over Western Michigan. Through three games, he has totaled 206 rushing yards and two touchdowns.
Both Frazier and Marsh will face off against a USC team that is also 3-0 and boasts a defense that has forced seven turnovers this season.
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