Jonah Tong on finding joy in the process

After you’re drafted, as you’re going up through the minors, was there ever a moment or moments where you started to question yourself or your approach? If you did, what did that feel like, or how did you work through it?

There are a lot of moments throughout my career that weren’t great. I remember my first year in professional baseball, I started hurt. That’s never fun, especially being in Florida. It’s baking outside, and having to go out at 12 o’clock every day and basically go watch baseball games that you’re not able to participate in was tough. Eventually, getting to go back into it, but at the same time, not playing to the level that you wish you were — or thought you were capable of — was a grind. 

I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who, even to this day, have a very huge impact on my career and how I go about my business. Coach [Garrett Baker] was our integration pitching coach, and I was pretty much attached to his hip the entire time I was there. Getting to know him and his mantras, we often found ways to emulate Bruce Lee’s “be like water.” In life, you’re always going to have challenges, and you’re going to be faced with a lot of things, but water’s free flowing, and it adapts to anything you put it in. Water is one of the most adaptable substances in the world, and that’s kind of how you want to be. You want to be adaptable throughout your career, or even just as a person, because there are a lot of things that you can’t control in life.

Year after year, you’re faced with challenges, which is grueling — being alone for the first time in your life, being away from home for the first time, moving city to city — it all builds on each other. At the end of the day, relying on the relationships that I built and the mindset that I had early really helped me, especially when I got into some challenging times. Even now, it’s something I always look back on.

If you feel comfortable, can you talk a little bit more about the mental side of things? How do you stay positive if things aren’t going the way you want them to?

You’re always going to want the best version of yourself, and ultimately, we lose sight of the fact that we’re human, so we judge ourselves critically. But at the end of the day, that’s because we want the best of ourselves, and that’s because we expect excellence. Baseball is a very hard sport, and it tells you that because if you hit .300 in a year, you had one of the best years in the league, and that’s getting out seventy percent of the time. Or a 3.50 ERA in the big leagues is remarkable, but that’s still allowing three and a half runs per nine. You’re still losing games that way, but those are statistically good numbers. Sometimes it’s really hard to distinguish between results and development, especially in the minors, where development is the main focus. Results in the big leagues are ultimately all that matter. Team wins are what everyone strives for.

I put a lot of pressure on myself because I expect myself to perform to the level that I feel like I should, and sometimes that’s not realistic. At the end of the day, that’s what keeps me always searching for more and trying to be the best version of myself. It’s tough. I sit back and I’ll be thinking a lot about my outings and what I could have done better, how I walked too many guys, or I gave up too many runs, or how I threw three bad pitches at 90, and those three are the one that are killing me.

As I got older and started to find different things for me that work as a reset, everything became easier. A big thing for me is talking it out. My girlfriend would laugh at me, but I use her a lot as a soundboard. My agent the same way, a lot of my friends the same way. I’ll talk about a lot of things, not because I want you to know anything else, it’s just for me to get it out. Understanding my own outlets was important for me, and it’s helped me a lot. Even this year hasn’t gone the way I particularly wanted it to, but there’s a lot of growth and development there. There’s a lot of learning about who I am as a player, both on and off the field, and things I need to work on. It doesn’t make things go faster or make things click easier, but you get to realize the unique situation you’re in. I’m playing professional baseball, and I’m living out my childhood dream, and these things are just part of the journey. When you start looking at it like that, it makes it a lot easier to get back on the saddle and try to work through it because it’s not easy. One thing I always try to tell people is, it’s going to be challenging, it’s going to be hard, but having a good support system is always the most important thing.

If we fast forward to last year, you had an incredible season where you also won pitching prospect of the year. What do you think changed for you going into that season that made the difference?

Honestly, nothing. I say it a lot, but last year, especially prep wise, was probably the easiest year I’ve had thus far. It wasn’t just because of success or anything like that. When I came into that season, I had a clear focus. I was out there to have fun, and I think everybody in our org would tell you the same thing. That was probably the most fun baseball I’ve ever had in my career, and it didn’t start off that way. At the beginning of the year, I think I was our only starter to have a 9 ERA through our first two games, and I was just like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t pitch. What’s going on?” 

I didn’t really care too much about what was going on on the field as much as I did about what was going on off it. We had a really good relationship with everybody in the clubhouse. We were really tight with our coaches, we had a clear plan, and we went out there and had fun. We learned a lot through each other and with each other. It was a lot of guys who came up together for the first few years of our career, so that kind of made it a lot easier. 

For me, I came in with a clear goal on what I want to do. I maximized things that I do really well, while also trying to support things that I didn’t. When you have a really tight relationship with your catchers and your pitching coaches, it makes that part a lot easier. I went into every game not really caring too much about the results and more about how to do my business. I think that took care of itself in a lot of cases, and it led me to a lot of places. The accolades are cool, but the process of what I did off the field was the thing I left being the most excited about after the fact. Anybody that was around me last year, coach and player included, would probably tell you that exact same thing.