Pirates aim to protect Jared Jones with slot in starting rotation between ‘2 innings-eaters’
Jared Jones finds himself in a familiar spot pitching between Mitch Keller and Paul Skenes for the Pittsburgh Pirates, even if the order is reversed.
Where Jones was behind Keller and ahead of Skenes in late September 2024, he’s now behind Skenes and ahead of Keller in a reconfigured starting rotation designed to provide protection.
After Jones missed the 2025 season and the first two months of this one following right elbow surgery, the Pirates are closely watching his pitch counts and innings workload.
“When you look at Jones, he’s not going to be unleashed, where we can just let him roll at seven innings and 100 pitches,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said. “It’s going to be managed as we go. To have him in between Paul and Mitch just made a lot of sense to us, as far as managing innings, having two innings-eaters on either side of him.”
Pairing Jones behind Skenes, the reigning National League Cy Young winner, gives the Pirates a pair of power pitchers at the top of their rotation. Slotting Jones in front of Keller, however, wasn’t about throwing off the timing of hitters the way the Pirates attempted to do by surrounding soft-tossing lefty Bailey Falter with high-velocity arms.
“You know what? That wasn’t part of really what we were looking at,” Kelly said. “Mitch is a great pitcher, mixes it in-and-out, up-down. The changeup has gotten better, and he’s just an innings eater for us that has historically thrown a lot for us. Felt like putting Jones in between those two was a good spot.”
Jones doesn’t believe his placement in the rotation will impact any individual game plans but said he could feed off following one of the game’s top right-handers if Skenes finds a weakness in the same opponent the night before.
“It shouldn’t. We’re two completely different pitchers,” Jones said. “It’s a mix of everything. You see your strengths and see what they line up with their hitters and make a game plan off of that. If the guy before exposes one of their strengths that you have, you’re probably going to do the same thing.”
Jones threw 77 pitches over 4 1/3 innings in his season debut Friday, allowing five runs on seven hits and two walks with six strikeouts in getting a no-decision in the 6-5 walk-off win over the Minnesota Twins. Kelly said Jones was on a limited pitch count of no more than 75-80.
His next scheduled start is Thursday night at the Houston Astros, and the Pirates are expecting Jones to more closely resemble the pitcher who posted a 6-8 record with a 4.14 ERA, 1.19 WHIP and 9.8 strikeouts per nine innings as a rookie.
Running on adrenaline in his MLB return, Jones threw four-seam fastballs on his first seven pitches and topped triple digits on nine of 12 pitches in the first inning against the Twins before mixing in his slider, changeup and curveball to keep them from sitting on his heater.
“It’s amazing what he can do for us,” Keller said. “I think he’s going be a lot more sharp the next time out than he was the first one. Just having his electric stuff and his mentality back in our rotation is huge. He’s just a fierce competitor out there. That’s what you love to see.”
