NEW YORK -- If Jared Jones can make it here, as the croon goes, he can make it anywhere.
And hey, based on both Bob Nutting's penchant for penny-pinching and Major League Baseball's pathetically imbalanced economic system, the kid just might, quite literally, make it here someday. You know, as part of the rotation for Mets, the sport's highest-payrolled operation. As a pitcher who takes the ball every fifth day. Who's afforded the latitude to last in a given game as long as he's effective, never mind extraordinary:
MLB's No. 57 prospect Jared Jones was firing on all cylinders for the @Pirates:
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) April 17, 2024
5 IP
1 H
0 R
0 BB
7 K pic.twitter.com/rNWPQRpRru
And if/when that day arrives, my friends, expect a thank-you card with a Queens post-mark to show up at 115 Federal Street back on our North Shore.
Not just because Jones was pulled after five near-perfect innings -- and only 59 pitches, a mindboggling 50 of those for strikes, to go with seven strikeouts, no walks and an isolated hit -- on this Tuesday night at Citi Field. Not just because that set the stage for the Pirates' 3-1 loss to his potential future employers. But really, way more for management being so excessive in ensuring his health, to the extent that they'd be oddly reactive or haphazard about it, that he'll be better positioned to become the next Big Apple icon.
I asked Derek Shelton afterward why this happened:
"It was pre-determined he was throwing five, and we had a pitch count on him for today. It was his first time on five," he'd reply, referring to a five-day gap between Jones' starts. The previous one was April 11 in Philadelphia. His other two came with six-day gaps. "I mean, this guy's one of our really good, young pitchers, as he demonstrated today. We knew going into the game that it was going to be five."
I followed up by reminding Shelton that Jones' first three starts saw pitch counts of 89, 80, 85.
"Yeah, I mean, he's thrown, l think, 89, 80, 85, so we knew the first time that he went on five that we were going to back him down. This kid's really important to us, as anybody that watched this would see. So it's one of those things where we knew where he was going to be. He was really good. When you're really good and you make a decision like that, then people are going to wonder what's going on. He's healthy, he's good, but it was something that we had going in pre-determined."
Sound reactive or haphazard?
Sound as if it could've been avoided?
Sound as if management might've been premature in publicly proclaiming that this would be the year to take winning seriously?
Look, let me be plain about this before proceeding further: I'm not stuck in some stone-age thinking when it comes to pitcher health. And that goes double as applied to those reaching extreme velocities: Of the 18 pitchers who averaged 95.8 mph or more on the gun in 2023, half of them -- half! -- currently have arm injuries, including the Pirates' Johan Oviedo, lost for this season to Tommy John surgery.
Evidence is overwhelming, in fact, that increased velocity, in general, has been accompanied every step of the way by the unprecedented rise in that specific surgery:
BROOKSGATE
That's no coincidence, and it's certainly no joke.
In the same breath, though, I'm comfortable stating -- and emphatically so -- that it makes no sense to rip the ball from a young pitcher's hand this way, similar to the way Paul Skenes is currently being coddled with Class AAA Indianapolis, as if he needs to be blanketed in bubble-wrap between turns, and I'm happy to lay out what I mean with a handful of bullets:
• No one knows a damned thing. That's the only commonality in all of the research, studies, first-hand perspective and all else. Not even the nation's preeminent arm surgeons will attest to having definitive answers on this front. Even as related to velocity, there are just as many proponents of the theory that increased spin rate is damaging arms. And other variables.
• No one knows of any formula to protect the arm. There aren't any universally agreed-upon limits and, for that matter, there's no universally agreed-upon methodology for determining how much not pitching can hurt an arm once that arm's put into motion. Nolan Ryan, who, by the way, should never be anyone's bar for these discussions since he was barely human, still makes waves in this discussion based on his own history of promoting more pitching -- within reason, obviously -- to create more arm strength.
• If anyone does think they know something or does think they've got a formula, they should do a hell of a lot better than what the Pirates just did with Jones here. As noted, Jones made three regular starts already, and then this oddity arrived from nowhere. It must've come up before this that Jones' start could've been pushed back a day, to the Wednesday finale here. He could've flipped starts with the Wednesday starter Bailey Falter, a veteran who'd have been working with a four-day gap and could've had his own pitch count constrained. Maybe figure all this out beforehand rather than on the fly.
• In 2023, which Jones split between Class AA and AAA, he made 25 starts, and he threw 80-plus pitches in 15 of those, 90-plus pitches in seven of those. Of the latter seven, all came against the more advanced Class AAA hitters and all in the second half of the season, when he'd theoretically have been tiring. But now, he's up here smoking big-league hitters the same way he did in the minors, and he's suddenly in peril? Give me a bleeping break.
• Want to put special restrictions on flamethrowing pitchers? Want to have more 'pre-determined' outings just for those guys? Well, be prepared to see how they respond to being defanged. Including as pitchers. They didn't get to where they are by holding back.
• These decisions are never -- I repeat, NEVER -- made at field level anymore. Shelton had as much to do with pulling Jones here as I did. And while there are reasons for upper management to define such situations, it also can lead to inanity like pulling Jones after five innings no matter what he'd done to that point. Jones told me afterward he'd known in advance he'd be out after five innings unconditionally, and I'll bet that neither Ben Cherington nor any of the collared shirts back at PNC Park had weighed his having a pitch count of 59, with the bottom of the New York order due up in the sixth.
For his part, Jones took this about as well as Skenes has been taking it:
“Yeah, it was pre-determined that I was going five innings today no matter what happened," he'd say. "So, yeah, do you want to see me down the road or do you want to see me get shut down? That's what I think of it. It all makes sense the way he worded it and told me.”
Meaning Shelton, of course.
And does he feel that's helping him?
“It's awesome. It's awesome that they're looking out for me and my health. It's a good thing.”
And would he prefer to have pitched the sixth and beyond?
"Whatever he says goes," he'd say before a laugh and adding, "I don't have enough time in this game to say otherwise, so whatever he says goes.”
Ha!
Anyway, one gets the idea.
I don't intend to distract from how spectacular Jones has been: Over 23 innings, he's struck out 32 and walked two -- no, that's not a typo -- while holding hitters to a .188 average. He's the fourth pitcher in big-league history to register seven-plus strikeouts in his first four career starts, joining the Yankees' Masahiro Tanaka in 2014, the Nationals' Stephen Strasburg in 2010 and the Pirates' own recently departed Jose DeLeon in 1983. Jones has also gone 17 1/3 innings without a walk. He's got 73 whiffs, or swing-and-miss pitches -- 15 in this game -- the most by anyone in their first four starts in the pitch-tracking era that began in 2008.
And this last one's so absurd it deserves its own paragraph, if not a plaque somewhere: By throwing 50 of his 59 pitches for strikes, an 84.7% strike rate, he became the fifth pitcher in big-league history to achieve such a rate on 50-plus pitches. One more pitch, and he could've been the very first to achieve that at 60 pitches.
Had he ever been that efficient? Like, in his life?
"Probably not," he'd reply with a broad smile.
Great kid. Great talent.
Might as well get something out of him, huh?
• It'll be a double-duty kinda day/night Wednesday for me, as I'll wrap up coverage of this Pirates-Mets series, then head 19 miles down the road to wrap up coverage of the now-finished Penguins, with their finale against the Islanders in Elmont, N.Y. Hey, I asked for work when I walked through that door, didn't I?
• I'll save my hockey writing for when I get there.
• Thanks for reading.
• And for listening:
