BREAKING: Things Just Took a MAJOR Turn for the Mets

Breaking news, things just took a major turn for Jonah Tong. For the second time in three months, the Mets are optioning the 22-year-old rookie to AAA Syracuse. Though this is technically a demotion, it is far different from the last time the team sent him back down to the minors, and fans are okay with that. We'll dive into all of it only here on Mets Digest. I'm your host today, Mike Duda, and before we talk Tong, I want to thank each and every single one of the over 7,500 subscribers that we have here on Mets Digest. Thank you to each and every single one of you, and if you're part of the 66% of viewers who has not yet hit that free subscribe button, please consider doing so. We're on the road to 8,000 subscribers, and it's worth your while. We got videos coming out each and every single day between myself and Josh Byrne, sometimes two, three, and even four videos in a given day. We're breaking news. We're talking all the trends. Trade deadline's going to be awesome, but for now, it's Jonah Tong time, and before we dive into everything Tong and this demotion, if you or your child spent years growing up on social media and experienced serious mental health struggles, you should hear this. Recently, a jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay millions for their role in designing and promoting addictive platforms. They knew their apps could contribute to anxiety, depression, and body image issues, but did not share those risks while prioritizing profits. The recent historic verdict underscores the consequences of those decisions, but now Morgan and Morgan is stepping up to hold these platforms accountable for the harm that they caused. Click the link in my bio to take a short quiz. Now with that, let's talk about the breaking news first. It was not actually Anthony Tacoma who was first on it. It was Will Salmon. We'll hear from him in a bit, but Tacoma says roster move. The Mets option Jonah Tong back down to AAA Syracuse after he walked six batters over his last six innings of work in bulk relieving rolls. Joey Gerber is up to help the Mets bullpen. That is the corresponding one for one move. So the question is why? Well, he wasn't great. Matt Sullivan puts it pretty well. Following Tuesday night's loss, that was 8-3 to the Mariners. Along with the Mets using 10 pitchers in the last two days, the team has decided to make a roster move to shake up the pitching staff. According to Will Salmon of The Athletic, again we'll hear from him in a bit, he was first on it. The Mets are optioning 3.60 ERA top pitching prospect Jonah Tong back down to the minor leagues to help quote refresh their heavily taxed bullpen. Now Tong last night, he pitched three and a third, gave up five hits, five runs, four of them are earned, a home run that was a three run shot for Julio Rodriguez, two walks, four strikeouts, 83 pitches. By no means is that good. However, and I'll talk about this in a video that I have later today that's going to come out about the defense, his defense did not help him whatsoever. Marcus Simeon made an error that ended up being two bases. Then that guy scored on a error by Mark Vientos at first base. So that's back to back errors in the third inning. And then fast forward to the fifth inning when Rodriguez hit that three run shot. It was aided by an infield base hit that could have possibly been considered an error on Vientos. Again, we'll talk this more later on today when we go into the defense in depth, but it was a backhand opportunity for Vientos. He came up with the backhand, but didn't have the ball with it. It bounced somewhere off his wrist, maybe his forearm and therefore trickled into right field. Runner got on. And of course that home run was with two outs. So technically speaking, Tong maybe kind of should have been out of that inning again. No excuses. He's paying the consequences now. That's why he's going down to AAA. And to talk about this tax bullpen that both Sullivan and Salmon are talking about, it absolutely is needing to help reduce some of the workload of their bullpen. Here's the Salmon quote. The New York Mets are optioning right-hander Jonah Tong to AAA on Wednesday for a fresh pitcher according to league sources that told The Athletic that is who Salmon works for. And I couldn't agree more. They definitely are. Take a look at their current bullpen roster right now. Well, David Peterson, he threw 51 pitches on Sunday, won't be available tonight. Austin Warren, he will be available. He threw 19 pitches on Monday. Sean Mania will not, 63 pitches on Monday. Brooks Railey, Luke Weaver, and Devin Williams all will. They threw 19, 15, and 18 respectively on Monday. But Waskar Brazvan threw 33 last night. Jonah Tong, obviously, who's down in the minors, threw 83. CNL Perez threw 28, and AJ Mentor threw both 9 on Monday and 19 last night. So if you didn't make this move, you would only have four available fresh bullpen arms to work with. And I don't think Carlos Mendoza wanted to deal with that, and that's why this move happened. And again, it's not necessarily a who performed the worst. It's a who didn't perform well, who can go down to AAA logistically in terms of having options and not having to put the player on waivers. But also, who logistically would make sense to send down? Like a guy like Waskar Brazvan, who pitched yesterday, and he didn't even pitch well. But he's a reliever that always pitches. He's a guy that the Mets rely on. So obviously, they're not going to send him down. Or maybe a guy like AJ Mentor, who was thrown back-to-back days. You would say, oh, why don't you just throw him down? No, obviously not. He doesn't have options, and it just wouldn't make sense. So for all those reasons, that is why Jonah Tong is in the minor leagues. But the question really is, given all that information, does it really make sense? And I'm kind of back and forth here. We're going to turn back to Sullivan for this one, who says, while the Mets will have some of their bullpen good to go for Wednesday's game, they want to avoid taxing their relievers too heavily. With Tong not slated to pitch for some time after his Tuesday outing, it makes sense he threw over 80 pitches, probably wouldn't be available until late this weekend. It makes sense to option him to the minor leagues, call up a reliever, and then consider bringing Tong back up a bit later for a future start. Now here's the thing. Seeing Tong sent down is a little strange, considering he's been much better in the majors this season than he was last year in 2025. But the faltering Mets need some bullpen help, and Tong would probably have provided that for the next few days. He would not have. He wouldn't have been available. And that is why they have to do it now. The season is starting to slip away, as Sullivan says. So in answer to the question, yes, logistically it makes sense, but maybe not fully, because when you take a look at his stats, as Sullivan mentioned, he has been significantly better this year as opposed to last year. The only earned runs that he gave up were last night in his three bullpen bulk outings, compared to last year when he had an ERA that was nearly 8, 8. And it's especially unclear based on this. Turn it to Mike Phillips now, who says it is unclear who will take Tong's place at this time, but he will need to spend at least the next 15 days in the minors, barring an injury-related call-up. With a pair of off days coming up sandwiched in between their next series with San Diego, the Mets won't need a fifth starter again until late next week. So that's the part that makes sense. The part that Tong has options makes sense. The part that he threw a lot of pitches makes sense. But really, you're going to penalize a guy for 15 days? I know they did a similar thing with Tobias Meyers, who should be available to come up at some point this week, if not next week. But again, it's a 15-day rule that you have to be, as David Stearns, willing to say, alright, we are going to say goodbye to Jonah Tong for two weeks. I guess the Mets were. Again, I don't know if I necessarily agree with that. And here is the reason why maybe Stearns will, or some people are going to defend this move. Because, when we turn back to Phillips, he says, while there were encouraging signs in Jonah Tong's performance to date, it is clear that he still has work to do to succeed as a big league starter. And I agree with that. As much as I don't necessarily want to see Tong get sent down to the minor leagues, I get it. He hasn't been great, and last night proved it. SNY analyst Daniel Murphy, of course, former Met, he pointed out during Tuesday night's broadcast that Tong doesn't have an elite breaking pitch to put hitters away yet. And he doesn't. He's pulling off on every single off-speed pitch, and he just can't throw it for a strike. Which makes it tougher for him to succeed, as opponents can measure up his stuff the more that they see him. And it makes sense. They're going to time up the fastball. They don't really have to worry about off-speed. They're going to say, okay, this guy's either throwing me a four-seamer or a cutter, and I'm just going to time it up and hit it. So the results that Tong had in Syracuse were also inconsistent. So he could benefit from some time working down there. And he's only 22 years old, so he's had a chance to develop into a solid pitcher. It'll give him that opportunity, some more experience, and he can work on those secondary pitches, which will only help him. And here are those AAA stats, if you're curious. One and three with a 568 ERA in 38 innings of work, 55 strikeouts, a 200 opponent batting average, and a 137 whip. Those are the stats that he accumulated before he was called up to the major leagues for the first time this season. Again, the only problem that I have with this move is you're getting rid of a bulk starter for the next two weeks. And the way that this pitching rotation works, the fact that they do have a lot of games when they get back from the West Coast, it just leaves me wondering. And I have a video coming out tomorrow about how the Mets using an opener role just hasn't worked. It's backfired on them significantly. So when you have that going for you, or going against you, I should say, do you really want to demote a starting pitcher? Who knows? The answer is yes for the Mets, but I don't know if I, as a fan, am comfortable with that. So what's going to happen moving forward, as I alluded to? Well, Phillips puts it perfectly. How the Mets fill that rotation spot figures to be interesting, especially given their recent call to leave David Peterson in the bullpen. Remember, now you had Peterson, Tong, and Minaya. Now you don't have Tong, so you have just two guys. And when we talk about the opener role, it hasn't worked. It proved last night when Waskar Brazman gave up two runs in one and two-thirds innings. What are you going to do? You have to put now Peterson and Minaya in the starting rotation, or you're going to know, if you're an opponent, who is coming in in that bulk role after the opener pitches. So nonetheless, I digress. This could theoretically create a lane for the return of Kodai Senga. This is the only possible other scenario. Who is building up his pitch count on a rehab assignment right now, also with Syracuse. Senga is currently scheduled to throw 85 pitches in a rehab start for Syracuse today, which would set him up to make a start for the Mets next week. Now that's good. That pencils in perfectly with when Tong probably would have pitched next. If the Mets feel that Senga needs more time, they could also look to give Zach Thornton, who's got a really cool MLB story by the way, another shot, or do a bullpen game with Peterson as the bulk reliever. So it does make sense. There are some options. Again, I just, I don't know. Something about it leaves me the wrong way. I can't really put my finger on it. I can't really point to why, but I'm not very comfortable with him going back down to the minor leagues. Maybe because also it's something in his head. We've seen Tong multiple times, just not be able to have that strong mentality that you need to be an MLB pitcher. And now with him getting flustered between AAA and the MLB multiple times, I don't know how good that is for a top pitching prospect moving forward. But nonetheless, here's that last emotion that we were talking about. Obviously it happened during spring training, actually happened pretty early in spring training, early March when they sent him down. So that's the first of three options. And then obviously today is the second. So Tong will only have one option moving forward for the remainder of his career. And last but very not least, let's talk about Joey Gerber, the replacement pitcher for Tong. He has only thrown two MLB innings this season. They were against the Dodgers on the 13th of April. Didn't give up an earned run, allowed two hits, one walk, and struck out five. So hopefully this will be a beneficial right-hander in the Met bullpen moving forward, a reliable guy to turn to in crunch time. But nonetheless, the Mets are going to be down a starter. So go down there in the comments and let me know, do you agree with this Tong move? Are you surprised? What are your thoughts? Give it all to me down below. But thank you so much as always for watching because unfortunately that's all the time we have today. And let's go Mets!