Stick Out Your Tong

In a season without a lot of pleasant surprises you gotta be pleasantly surprised at how awesome Nolan McLean‘s been through three starts. Steve Cohen in fact has already decreed to retire No. 26 in a ceremony next season. But before that, we’re getting a potentially better young pitcher in Jonah Tong, whose motion recalls Tim Lincecum and who’ll be wearing No. 21.

I ran into friend of MBTN Dave the other night at CitiField and we agreed that of the available numbers (we went though them all), 21 was the best for Tong. That’s in part because it’s just a badass number, but also because it aligns with McLean’s 26 as a kind of new identifier of a rising Met rotation–sort of like when the 86ers took numbers in the teens or the accident of Matz, Harvey and Syndergaard occupying 32-34.

This may all be imaginary as young pitchers are notoriously unpredictable and too many guys now arrive wearing No. 73. But maybe we can find room for Brandon Sproat to take 29– sorry, Jared Young.

I count only six pitchers to wear 21 in Mets history, starting with Warren Spahn, then Bob Moorhead, Bill Pulsipher, Masato Yoshii, Bobby M. Jones and most recently, Rich Hill.

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I’ve been meaning to take a moment and extend props to Starling Marte, who was forgotten while injured last year but is reminding us once again that he’s a very good player. I guess that also counts as a pleasant surprise of 2025.

Alert reader Chris Sullivan points out that Marte recently surpassed teammate/half-brother Jeff McNeil as the all-time leader in home runs by guys who wore No. 6 for the Mets. Marte sits at 36 dinger; McNeil was the previous leader at 34. As noted frequently in this space, that’s not necessarily saying much although McNeil and now Marte have brought new stability and skill to the jersey we haven’t seen since Wally Backman.