PIRATES

Jared Jones (elbow) will throw a side session in the coming days and will start for Class AA Altoona on Sunday, per Ben Cherington, as he continues his recovery from last year's elbow surgery.

Jones threw 52 pitches over four scoreless innings for the Curve on Tuesday. It was his third rehab start at a third different level and the first time he's completed four innings in an outing. As Jones continues to ramp up during a rehab assignment that compares to a spring training workload, an increase in intensity and volume is expected. That isn't limited to in-game scenarios, though. 

"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?" Todd Tomczyk said. "The arm doesn’t know what the arm is. The arm just knows that it’s throwing at a high intensity. 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.”

As for Jones' pitch limits once he returns to the big-league club, Tomczyk said decisions will be made as a part of a high level, collaborative effort between individuals in the performance team, the front office, the coaching staff and the research and development team. The player has a significant role in those decisions, too. 

"Jared has to have an ownership into this and a lot of things go into that factor," Tomczyk said. "Past workload, how he recovers, how efficient he’s been. So it’s not just one individual metric. It’s a conglomeration of a lot of different factors that go into it. One man’s journey is another man’s treasure, so his journey is different than these others. Yes, there is a rather robust database of pitchers at this level that have gone through surgeries like Jared has, but every journey is unique."