Jacob deGrom [1] versus Jonah Tong [2]. The Jonah Tong of the past versus the Jacob DeGrom of the future. The Met pitching prospect who excelled amid a glittering class of his promising peers versus the Met pitching prospect at the outset of a journey he’s pursuing alongside those possessing arms full of potential like his.
It was too good to be true. It really was.
The Jacob deGrom we knew and loved and were forsaken by when the money was too good to pass up elsewhere returned to Citi Field Friday night, and Jacob came home with a vengeance. Actually, Jake went about his business as he usually did as a Met. He was elegant, he was efficient, he walked off the mound with nothing to regret on his end. The only difference from the deGrom we savored as ours from 2014 to 2022, besides the TEXAS on his chest, is he’d had eight runs scored on his behalf by his teammates.
The Jonah Tong with whom we’ve just commenced to acquaint ourselves and we wish to embrace as part of the solution to all that ails us was the collateral damage in deGrom’s homecoming. He’d looked so ready to rock against the Marlins and Reds. He did rock in those starts, one a win, one a loss, but both revelations in their own manner. Friday night revealed a 22-year-old pitcher, no matter how highly rated for what it is believed he can do, is sometimes simply a 22-year-old kid who has a ways to go.
The Rangers were immune to Tong’s talents. One struck out against him. One flied out. The other seven reached base. He faced all nine only once. Two walks preceded four two-out hits, two before and two after another walk. It didn’t feel as if balls were being whacked unmercifully, but it did feel like the pitcher was. None of it felt good. You wanted to see Tong take a breath, find his poise, assert his authority. You would have settled for a line drive finding a glove, anything to get him out of the first inning. Instead, the first inning went on without him. He threw forty pitches. Twenty of them were balls. Six batters crossed the plate. The night that began with visions of a transcendent pitching duel didn’t get to the bottom of the first before it was over.
If I’d let myself, I could have teared up watching deGrom get loose as a Texas Ranger inside Citi Field. This shouldn’t have been happening. For all the business reasons I accepted three Decembers ago, it killed me to see this century’s Seaver pitch against us rather than for us. But a game was about to be played, and I wanted deGrom’s team to lose, so I didn’t bother with tears. And as Tong sunk in the quicksand that enveloped him, I could feel another tear or two developing, indicative of emotions that don’t materialize as a matter of course when the Mets routinely fall behind. I felt so bad for the kid. He was flailing and groping, and as batter after batter got the best of him, it was clearly crushing him and me. But a game was in progress. No time for tears.
[3]When the game was over, my eyes were dry. Sadness isn’t coming to the fore when it comes to watching the 2025 Mets let a playoff spot get away. After falling behind, 6-0, they didn’t dent deGrom until the third, compiling three runs, which would have been fantastic had it not merely halved their deficit and if they weren’t up against a guy who was in no mood to give up anything more. Sure enough, deGrom pitched the fourth through seventh like Jesus Luzardo pitched the second through eighth the night before in Philadelphia. The Mets are in the habit of getting nothing going. Friday it was twelve up and twelve down after the Mets crept to within 6-3.
Tong’s two-thirds of an inning was just sad. Everything else about the Mets this evening was embarrassing. Huascar Brazoban failed to promptly cover first base on a grounder to Pete Alonso in the second. By the time Brazoban scurried to the bag — too late to beat a hustling Jake Burger — Alonso flung the ball in the general direction of his pitcher’s face before it landed in the dugout. Burger wound up on second, which was the least worst aspect of that sequence. In the fourth, Jeff McNeil got called out on a borderline strike three and couldn’t resist to drop some magic words in the direction of home plate ump Scott Barry, who heard them and ejected him. In the seventh, with Gregory Soto on and needing by law to face a third batter, Bruce Bochy sent up a righthanded pinch-hitter, Dylan Moore, to torment Carlos Mendoza. Moore blasted a two-run homer off lefty Soto to provide deGrom the kind of cushion he rarely had in Queens. Up 8-3, the visiting starter finished his seven innings with minimal fuss. The Ranger bullpen went similarly unbothered, and Jake emerged as the winning pitcher at Citi Field [4]
It doesn’t show up in the box score, but the Mets’ A/V squad could have let deGrom’s initial trot to the mound where he earned his two Cy Youngs go unaccompanied by whatever idiotic DJ prattle they insist on inflicting on their crowd for a few seconds. Not to honor Jake — they played him a thanks-for-the-memories video at 6:45 — but to give the people who show up to Mets games with a sense of what’s come before a moment to take in what they’re seeing. Six runs off Tong had warped the vibe, but it was still Jacob deGrom pitching at Citi Field for the first time in three years. SNY withheld commercials so the home viewers could soak it in. All we got was some shouting and throbbing, the essence of inane dronery.
If the sole blemish of the evening was aesthetic, we could laugh it off. Gallows giggles would be welcome at this point. The Mets have lost seven in a row, a sum that should sound familiar, given that the Mets have done that twice before in 2025. Know a lot of playoff teams losing seven in a row repeatedly? After watching Tong have little more success composing himself before reporters than he did against batters, I stayed up to see if the Dodgers could do us a favor and beat the Giants. I’m not programmed to root for L.A. against San Fran, but this wasn’t about them. Soon, it will not be about us. Just as I nodded off, Patrick Bailey launched a tenth-inning grand slam at Oracle Park, and the Giants moved to within a half-game of the Mets for the final Wild Card. The Reds, who hold the tiebreaker over us, lost, at least, though I can’t imagine we’ll be in any position where such minutia will matter to postseason schedulemakers.
Tong, no less promising than he was before Friday, will hopefully process what happened to him for the better and certainly pitch another day, presumably soon. (Also, Kodai Senga produced positive results at Syracuse, so maybe he’ll be back to pick up slack.) Brandon Sproat today, Nolan McLean tomorrow. I seem to be implying there are still some things to look forward to. There are, in the sense that we’re still Mets fans and we can still relish young pitchers coming along, even if not every one of them comes along all at once. As far as what it means to an unforeseen sizzling “pennant race,” you’ve gotta be kidding. I’m past attempting to solve “they’re too good to play this bad” puzzles. They’re not good. Those who constitute the everyday lineup have shown no signs of succeeding meaningfully as a collective, and as individual performances go, honestly, who cares? I like an upbeat statistic as much as any fan, but I can’t remember the last time any hit or home run or stolen base made any kind of tangible difference to the Mets’ fortunes. The pitchers who aren’t the kids are just as culpable for where we are.
It’s not a good team, and they’re not in a good situation. The part where we say they “yet somehow, they’re still in playoff position” figures to turn inoperative imminently, and we won’t need to ask how it’s possible that a team this good can be this bad. It’s not a team that’s that good. Fourteen games remain to change that answer. Breath will not be held in advance of that happening.