The Mets look to bounce back after a disappointing loss on Thursday night. Coming off the high of sweeping the Phillies, the Mets played a sloppy night of baseball and allowed the Marlins to score five unearned runs. The Mets made multiple comebacks throughout the night, but ultimately started to land in bad luck at the end of the game, hitting the ball directly at people.
But that’s not the story tonight. The Mets are calling up top prospect Jonah Tong to make his major league debut. The electric prospect will go head-to-head with Eury Pérez, a young-phenom pitcher on the Marlins. Should be an exciting night!
Jonah Tong has excelled this season in the minors. Across 102 innings in Binghamton, he has a 1.59 ERA, 0.922 WHIP with an insane 14.3 K/9 from 162 strikeouts. He has allowed eight hits, no runs over his first 11 2/3 innings in Syracuse while striking out 17 batters. He has a minor league career K/9 of 13.7. Tong has a deceptive delivery with a low-to-mid 90’s mph fastball with great break. He mixes in a mid-70’s curve, low-to-mid 80’s slider and a mid-80’s changeup. He’s getting an absurd amount of swings and misses in the minors this season. Now the Mets need him to carve up major league lineups.
Eury Pérez is finally healthy and is doing Eury Pérez things. He’s made 14 starts totaling 70 2/3 innings this season with a 3.44 ERA, 3.62 FIP, 0.976 WHIP and a 129 ERA+. Eury had an great stretch from July 3rd to August 2nd allowing only four runs over 34 innings (1.06 ERA). Since then he has a 5.23 ERA from allowing 14 runs over 20 2/3 innings with nine of those runs happening in back-to-back starts. The Mets have the following career stats against Eury:
- Pete Alonso 0-1, K
- Brett Baty 0-1, K
- Francisco Lindor 0-2
- Ronny Mauricio 1-1, BB
- Jeff McNeil 0-1, BB
- Cedric Mullins 1-2, K
- Brandon Nimmo 1-1, BB
- Tyrone Taylor 1-2, 2B, K
- Mark Vientos 1-1, HR
Three Things To Watch For:
- Francisco Lindor. Lindor now has a three game multi-hit streak. Over his last three games he has gone 7-for-13, all singles. In his last 15 games Lindor is hitting .455/.507/.712 with a total of 30 hits and nine extra-base hits. The difference Thursday night and a month ago was now when Lindor is on base, it feels like there is a chance the Mets are going to drive him in. Let’s keep this going tonight!
- Fielding. The fielding was just off last night. It wasn’t just a single player making a mistake, there were multiple plays around the infield where the Mets just looked discombobulated. The Marlins took advantage of the Mets mistakes and forced them to make plays at the plate (which the Marlins beat out by a half step/slide each time). Really frustrating stuff, but also stuff a good team will let wash off of them before tonight’s game. We’ll be watching to see how loose the Mets seem early.
- Pete Alonso. Alonso is looking to end the season strong. He hit his 30th home run of the season last night and now is looking to surpass his home run total from 2024 (34). He has a 3.1 bWAR, which is already ahead of his 2024 amount (2.6) and nearing his 2023 total (3.3). He now has a 144 OPS+, which is third best season (2019 – 147, 2022 – 146) and much better than his 2023 and 2024 mark (123 OPS+). In his last three games he has gone 7-for-12 at the plate with two doubles and a home run (.583/.615/1.000).
Let’s Go Mets!
