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His next start comes Saturday night in Cincinnati.

“He’s a first-class kid. If he has a great career, he’s going to be a rock star in New York City,” former Blue Jays manager John Gibbons, now the Mets bench coach, told the Star from the visitors’ dugout in Detroit earlier this week. “People just gravitate toward him. But the main thing is that he’s got a great arm, an overpowering arm.”

Tall and lean with a 98-m.p.h. fastball and a delivery reminiscent of two-time Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum, Tong has elite extension that makes that heater look even faster.

He began this season at Double-A with the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. Tong had a 2.37 ERA after a four-inning outing against the Richmond Flying Squirrels on May 23 but then kicked things into another gear.

“The thing that I found that was different than any year before is how easy it became in June and July to just have fun and let loose,” Tong said in a conversation that can be heard on this week’s episode of “Deep Left Field,” the Star’s baseball podcast. “I think there was a lot of pressure I put on myself, especially early in the year, and then I just said, ‘Hey, let’s go play baseball and have fun.’ ”

And did he ever. Tong allowed just 30 hits over 64 innings in his next 12 starts, with a 1.13 ERA and 97 strikeouts, earning a two-start call-up to Triple-A Syracuse where he struck out 17, against just three walks, over 11 2/3 shutout innings. His next start was in the big leagues.

“He just forced our hand,” Gibbons said. “We were scuffling in the rotation and he was just dominating every start, whatever level down there, so we brought him up.”

There was electricity in the air even as Tong was warming up for his major-league debut. He threw a three-up, three-down top of the first inning, then watched his Mets teammates score five runs.

Tong allowed a leadoff double to fellow Canadian Otto Lopez to start the second, then got ɫɫ��’s Liam Hicks, a former ɫɫ�� Mets teammate, to ground out and wound up putting up another zero.

In the bottom of the second, the Mets scored seven more runs.

“Pre-game, I remember telling them that (I’ll) never complain about run support,” Tong said. Then after the second inning, “one of our hitting coaches came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you wanted a party, right? You got a party.’ ”

Tong’s parents introduced him to baseball, though he doesn’t remember much about his first Blue Jays game, other than that they lost to Cleveland.

“I was more there just for the popcorn and the foam finger.”

He was a fan of individual pitchers rather than teams, with Brett Cecil being an early favourite, but he remembers his school being shut down for the afternoon of Game 5 of the 2015 American League division series — the José Bautista bat flip game — so the students could go down to the library and watch.

Despite his skills, Tong was never part of the Baseball Canada junior program.

“I probably wasn’t ready enough,” he said. “Development … is going to happen when it’s going to happen and you can’t really force it. I was thankful to get everything going pretty late, and that’s OK. No kid’s journey is going to be perfect.”

There’s a good chance, though, that Tong finds himself finally suiting up for Canada at the 2026 World Baseball Classic next spring, alongside another of his favourite pitchers, Calgary’s Mike Soroka.

Growing up in Markham, Tong didn’t head into ɫɫ�� all that often. “I wasn’t a big fan of the city because it always meant a lot of traffic” he said. When he did, his favourite place was the St. Lawrence Market, where he loves St. Urbain Bagels and Quik Sushi and is itching to try Paddington’s peameal bacon on a bun.

The young fireballer could be back home sooner than planned. His Mets currently hold the third wild-card spot in the National League, a game behind San Diego. It’s not out of the question that the Mets and the Jays could meet in the World Series.

“I was thinking about how many tickets I may have to get for that.”