Pittsburgh Pirates Win on Monday as Rookie Hurler Puts Together Historic Effort
After being swept over the weekend by the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Pirates got a much-needed win on Monday night, beating the Milwaukee Brewers. In the win, Pirates' rookie Jared Jones continued to make history.
After being swept over the weekend by the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Pirates rebounded on Monday for a nice win against the Milwaukee Brewers at PNC Park.
The win moves the Pirates to 12-11 on the year and drops the first-place Brewers to 14-7.
The Pirates had nine hits in the win, including a home run from Andrew McCutchen, but they also got another solid pitching performance from rookie Jared Jones.
While all the focus this year has been on "When will Paul Skenes get brought up?" Jones has been extremely solid for Buccos. After getting the win on Monday, he's now 2-2 with a 2.79 ERA. He allowed one earned run on four hits. He struck out seven.
With the seven strikeouts, he joined an exclusive class in baseball history as well.
Per Sarah Langs and MLB.com, he is the fourth pitcher since 1893 to strike out at least seven batters in each of his first five career starts.
Jones joins:
2014 Masahiro Tanaka
2010 Stephen Strasburg
1983 José DeLeón
Because he hasn't played enough games yet to graduate off the list, Jones is still the No. 3 overall prospect in the Pirates organization.
The following comes from a portion of his MLB.com prospect profile:
While Jones has learned a lot about the craft of pitching, he’s still coming at hitters with a power repertoire. His fastball averaged 96 mph in 2023 across two levels and flirted with triple digits, missing bats up in the zone. He’s continued to differentiate between his sweeping slider and his curve that features depth, the former thrown in the upper-80s and the latter a low-80s breaker. Both can miss bats. His firm changeup is a fourth pitch, but it’s improved considerably since the start of his career.
The Pirates and Brewers play again on Tuesday night at 6:40 p.m. ET.
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