PITTSBURGH — Coming off right elbow injury, the Pirates have been carefully monitoring Jared Jones’ workload all season.
The right-hander has been on a strict pitch count, usually around 75-80 pitches with rare instances of going much beyond that.
At 77 pitches through four innings in Saturday’s loss to the Red Sox at PNC Park, the expectation was that the Pirates would turn to the bullpen for the fifth inning. But after Ronny Simon bounced into an inning-ending double play in the bottom of the fourth, Jones made his way up the dugout steps and jogged out to the mound.
“We pushed him a little bit,” manager Don Kelly said of the decision.
Jones rewarded the Pirates by efficiently retiring the Red Sox in order on only eight pitches to finish off five solid innings of one-run ball.
“(Kelly) told me I had 15 pitches, so getting behind 3-1 to that first batter kind of pissed me off. ‘Alright, here it is,’ you know what I mean?,” said Jones. “But yeah, being able to get through the five, especially with how things were going, not really efficient, meant a lot for me tonight.”
Jones got nine-hitter Nick Sogard to foul out to third base. After the lineup flipped over, he retired Anthony Siegler via fly out on the first pitch and got Ceddanne Rafaela to bounce out to short for the final out.
The Pirates had Wilber Dotel ready in the bullpen if needed, but Jones got the job done.
“Dotel was ready to come in,” said Kelly. “We were looking at 85-ish (pitches), and when he got the first-pitch out on the second hitter that inning and got Rafaela too. Dotel was ready at Rafaela and just felt like (Jones) had earned that last one. I thought he did a great job of staying in attack mode.”
It was a solid bounce-back outing for Jones, who had a strong month of July but had a 14.14 ERA through his first two outings to begin August.
Jones flirted with danger a couple times but put on quite the escape act to keep the Pirates in the game. The Red Sox had two in scoring position with one out in the third but didn’t score. The following inning, Boston had runners on second and third with no outs and again failed to get a run home.
“Thought getting out of those jams in the third and fourth are pretty huge for us as a team and for my personal confidence going into games,” he said. “I couldn’t really ask for much more.”
Jones has been a harsh critic of himself when starts he’s had haven’t gone well. He used some colorful language to describe his subpar performances on occasion. This one was better, and one that was “really positive” in Jones’ eyes.
“What a competitor,” said Kelly. “(Jones) made pitches when he had to.”
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