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Jonathan Pintaro went undrafted out of high school and spent five seasons at Shorter University, D2 school in the Gulf South Conference located in Rome, Georgia, without being selected by a Major League Baseball team. The 24-year-old still had the passion for baseball and refused to let his dream die, signing with the Glacier Range Riders of the Pioneer League for the 2023 season. Still, he had no takers. With his dream holding on by a thread, he decided to return to Glacier Range for the 2024 season. He made three appearances, all starts, posting a 4.40 ERA in 14.0 innings, with 13 hits allowed, 1 walk 1, and 23 strikeouts, and finally found a suitor. On June 3, 2024, the New York Mets officially signed Pintaro to a minor league contract.
The right-hander was assigned to the High-A Brooklyn Cyclones and pitched in Coney Island for two months, making 7 starts and 9 total appearances with a 2.50 ERA in 36.0 innings, allowing 28 hits, walking 14, and striking out 35. He was promoted to the Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies in late July and was just as effective in the two months he was there, making 7 starts and posting a 3.18 ERA in 34.0 innings with 26 hits allowed, 10 walks, and 34 strikeouts. He was promoted to Triple-A Syracuse for his final start of the season, throwing four scoreless innings there, and posted a 2.68 ERA in 74.0 innings on the season in totality, allowing 58 hits, walking 28, and striking out 75.
Following the conclusion of the season, the Mets sent him to the Arizona Fall League, where he allowed 4 earned runs in 10.1 innings, good for a 3.48 ERA, with 9 hits allowed, 6 walks, and 10 strikeouts.
He began the 2025 season with Binghamton and once again put up solid results. In 42.1 innings over eleven starts, the right-hander posted a 3.40 ERA with 32 hits allowed, 15 walks, and 57 strikeouts. On June 24, Pintaro was promoted to Triple-A, and a day later, the New York Mets selecting his contract, showing that perseverance does pay off; almost a year to the day prior, he had been pitching in Kalispell, Montana in front of roughly 2,000 people; now, he would be pitching in front of almost twenty times that amount in the capital of the world.
It was expected that Pintaro would pitch out of the Mets’ bullpen and the big 6’3”, 235-pound right-handed did exactly that; he appeared in a single game against the Atlanta Braves on June 25, coming out of the bullpen in the ninth inning of a 7-1 lead, allowing two runs on two hits and two walks in 0.2 innings. He was optioned back down to Triple-A Syracuse and remained there for the remainder of the season, posting a 5.27 ERA in 39.2 innings over 17 games, five of which were starts.
Pintaro did not exactly impress in his brief MLB cup-of-coffee, nor did he put up particularly good numbers with the Syracuse Mets for the rest of the season, but as the Mets identified when they signed him out of the Pioneer League in 2024, the right-hander has the stuff to get MLB outs when he has his stuff working. The right-hander throws fastballs nearly 75% of the time, mixing in a high-spin cutter, a mid-90s fastball, and a low-90s sinker. He supplements those pitches with a mid-to-high-80s changeup that gives him a north-south option and a low-to-mid-80s sweeping slider that gives him a horizontal option.
Already on the 40-man roster with remaining options, Pintaro has an outside shot of making the major league bullpen if he is really impressive during spring training, but odds are, he will be optioned to Triple-A Syracuse to begin the year and will be one of a handful of internal starting or bullpen options the team can activate with when and if the need arises.