{"id":3909,"date":"2025-08-29T11:04:58","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T17:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=3909"},"modified":"2025-08-29T11:04:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T17:04:58","slug":"stick-out-your-tong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=3909","title":{"rendered":"Stick Out Your Tong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-109\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/26.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"55\" height=\"48\" \/>In a season without a lot of pleasant surprises you gotta be pleasantly surprised at how awesome <strong>Nolan McLean<\/strong>&#8216;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&#8217;re getting a potentially better young pitcher in <strong>Jonah Tong<\/strong>, whose motion recalls Tim Lincecum and who&#8217;ll be wearing No. 21.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-104\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/21.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"41\" height=\"48\" \/>I ran into friend of MBTN <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/DavesMetsDugout\/\">Dave<\/a> 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&#8217;s in part because it&#8217;s just a badass number, but also because it aligns with McLean&#8217;s 26 as a kind of new identifier of a rising Met rotation&#8211;sort of like when the 86ers took numbers in the teens or the accident of Matz, Harvey and Syndergaard occupying 32-34.<\/p>\n<p>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 <strong>Brandon Sproat<\/strong> to take 29&#8211; sorry, <strong>Jared Young<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to take a moment and extend props to <strong>Starling Marte<\/strong>, who was forgotten while injured last year but is reminding us once again that he&#8217;s a very good player. I guess that also counts as a pleasant surprise of 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Alert reader Chris Sullivan points out that Marte recently surpassed teammate\/half-brother <strong>Jeff McNeil<\/strong> 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&#8217;s not necessarily saying much although McNeil and now Marte have brought new stability and skill to the jersey we haven&#8217;t seen since <strong>Wally Backman<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a season without a lot of pleasant surprises you gotta be pleasantly surprised at how awesome Nolan McLean&#8216;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&#8217;re getting a potentially better young pitcher in Jonah Tong, whose motion recalls &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=3909\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Stick Out Your Tong&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[411,626,866],"tags":[251,74,1215,1189,1213,1216,492,604,1214,991,668],"class_list":["post-3909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-met-mysteries","category-useless-milestones","category-who-is-this-guy","tag-bill-pulsipher","tag-bobby-m-jones","tag-brandon-sproat","tag-jared-young","tag-jonah-tong","tag-masato-yoshii","tag-matt-harvey","tag-noah-syndergaard","tag-nolan-mclean","tag-rich-hill","tag-steven-matz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3910,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3909\/revisions\/3910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}