Jones making up for lost time, looking to build volume

CHICAGO -- In the week that Jared Jones has been back with the Pirates following two months on the injured list, Derek Shelton has expressed the importance of building up his volume over the rest of the season. 

Even before Jones threw his first pitch as a big-leaguer at the end of March, there were plans to monitor his innings after throwing a career-high 126 1/3 between Class AA Altoona and Class AAA Indianapolis last season. The previous year, he was at 122 2/3 innings with Class A Greensboro. But when Jones was hit with the right lat strain in early July, any concern regarding his much larger major-league workload was seemingly alleviated. 

Instead, the attention was turned toward getting him back healthy and pitching as much as possible. 

"We need to build his volume up," Shelton said Monday at Wrigley Field before the Pirates' 5-3 win over the Cubs, in which Jones pitched 6 1/3 innings and allowed three runs. "And I'm not talking about volume in terms of one specific game, like how many innings he pitches. I'm talking total volume. We came into the year, and the amount of innings that he pitched early on, it was like, 'OK, how are we going to monitor this going forward?' Did not want the lat strain to be the reason we had to monitor it. That was unfortunate. Now we have to get him built up so, when we go into next year, we have a good volume built up." 

As with Paul Skenes, it's going to be important for Jones to get a taste of what it's like to pitch late in a season. But while Skenes is getting valuable experience during a time of the year in which he's not used to pitching, Jones is having to make up for lost time. 

"I can't really say I'm pitching deep in September since I've been out for two months. This is like July for me," Jones said. "So, just going out there and doing my thing and making sure everything feels good." 

Everything certainly seems to be feeling good for Jones, especially after this latest quality start. He said this was the best he's felt since even before the injury, was confident enough in his slider to turn to it 42 times and generate seven whiffs with 11 called strikes. He still managed to use his four-seam fastball as a viable piece of a primarily two-pitch repertoire and kept hitters off balance en route to surpassing 100 innings on the season. 

"A good day. Just a really good day," Jones said. "I felt good. Everything came out the way I wanted it to. Pounded the zone for the most part. Can't complain." 

Jones didn't make many mistakes in what ultimately resulted in a no-decision, as the Pirates scored five unanswered runs in the final two innings to erase a three-run deficit. He did, however, leave a curveball over the plate that Dansby Swanson sent over the fence for a solo home run in the third inning: 

Then, after allowing a one-out single and hitting a batter, it appeared as if Jones might escape the fifth via an inning-ending double play. Instead, Pete Crow-Armstrong beat out the throw to second to extend the inning and, one batter later, Ian Happ delivered with a two-run triple down the first-base line for a 3-0 cushion: 

“He essentially made one bad pitch," Shelton said. "He made a bad pitch on the breaking ball to Dansby and he hit it out, and then the other run he gave up, I know Happ hits a ball inside the line, but we get one of the fastest guys in baseball that basically beats out a routine double play ball. You don’t see that very often and it’s one of those things where you’re behind the runner and he beats it out, but I thought Jared was good. Eighty pitches through six, that’s the first time he’s been seven ups in a long time, even on his rehab."

Jones did a commendable job of flipping the switch after struggling against these same Cubs the last time out on Aug. 27. In four innings in which he allowed five runs on five hits and two homers, Jones failed to land his offspeed pitches and expressed a desire to dial it down in his upcoming bullpen sessions and figure out what went wrong. I asked him specifically about the work he did in the bullpen between starts and how it helped him go from a poor outing to a more productive performance against the same team and in a more hostile environment. 

"I would say I'm a really big feel guy. Couldn't fix it in my last outing just because you go out there and you're competing. You're not trying to feel your way into an outing," Jones said. "So, you can feel it in a bullpen as you just try and fix the small things. Just take care of your stuff and I feel like we had a really good week doing that." 

Following that last start, Jones also acknowledged the importance of treating poor outings as learning experiences rather than opportunities to sulk. He showed no intentions of partaking in the latter. He got himself back into a position to compete, added to his overall volume of innings and -- perhaps most importantly -- kept his team within reach prior to the late rally. 

“I don’t think he’s ever going to sulk. He’s probably going to try to run through a wall before he’s going to sulk," Shelton said. "His personality is he’s going to go more straight on. He’s a kid who probably thinks he should throw 130 in nine innings every time out, and you love that about him. Sulking is not in his vocabulary. He’s going to go.”