Pirates Reveal Next Step for Jared Jones' Rehab Assignment
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PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Pirates will get back one of their better pitchers in the coming weeks in Jared Jones, who will bolster their pitching staff.
Jones has already made three starts on his rehab assignment and Pirates general manager Ben Cherington revealed that he will make his next start on May 17 for Double-A Altoona, as they host Richmond at People's Natural Gas Field.
This marks the second start for Jones at Altoona, as he made his first start for them back on May 12. He threw 52 pitches over four scoreless innings, allowing just three hits and posting four strikeouts in the 4-0 home win over Richmond.
Jones began his rehab assignment with Single-A Bradenton on April 30 and he threw three perfect innings with five strikeouts over 40 pitches, including 31 strikes, in the 5-1 win over Lakeland at home.
He made his second start on his rehab assignment with Triple-A Indianapolis on May 6, as he threw three innings, allowing five hits and a walk and an earned run over 54 pitches, while posting two strikeouts.
It's another big step for Jones, as he could make a full return to the Pirates by the end of the month.
When Jones Could Return for the Pirates
The Pirates placed Jones on the 60-day injured list, which started on Opening Day, March 26, meaning that he can officially return to the major leagues on May 26.
Cherington said that there is a possibility that Jones could join the Pirates around that time and Pirates senior director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk confirmed that Jones could do that as well.
Jones has increased his workload each of these past three rehab assignment starts and it's likely that he'll go deeper into this outing as well, as they ramp him up as a starting pitcher moving forward.
He will also come back to PNC Park and throw a side/bullpen for pitching coach Bill Murphy prior to this next start, as they evaluate where he is in terms of his readiness and development.
The encouraging thing for Jones is that he has thrown all of his pitches and has reached great velocity as well, with his four-seam fastball touching 100 mph.
Tomczyk said that everyone is involved in Jones' return and they'll make that decision when they see fit. He and the Pirates performance team are more interested in how his arm is working and how it responds to an increased workload/velocity/ups moving forward.
"Increases in intensity and volume really. Increase the ups. Increase the number of pitches," Tomczyk said. "If I may digress a little bit, we as an industry are so focused on game pitches, but if you really want to talk about workload, what about the bullpen pitches, what about the flatground pitches, what about all the pitches in between?
“The arm doesn’t know what the arm is. The arm just knows that it’s throwing at a high intensity. Just from our perspective, we don’t get so enamored from a performance team’s perspective, we don’t get so enamored with in game pitches, it’s more of how they come out of the total volume.”
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Dominic writes for Pittsburgh Pirates On SI, Pittsburgh Panthers Pn SI and also, Pittsburgh Steelers On SI. A Pittsburgh native, Dominic grew up watching Pittsburgh Sports and wrote for The Pitt News as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, covering Pitt Athletics. He would write for Pittsburgh Sports Now after college and has years of experience covering sports across Pittsburgh.