A little over 24 hours after being placed on the 15-day injured list, Jared Jones won’t be throwing for at least that many days.
Pirates manager Derek Shelton said the right-hander has a Grade 2 lat muscle strain and probably won’t throw for about two weeks. Jones departed his Wednesday night start after just 78 pitches as the club exercised ample caution with its 22-year-old rookie.
The Pirates waited until Friday afternoon to provide a more thorough update on Jones after team doctors checked him out.
“In a situation like this, we never speculate on that,” Shelton said. “After he was seen by the doctors and after he got the imaging, we had a way better idea of where he was at.”
Jones’ start was his first since June 22, as the club skipped his previous turn in the rotation to manage his workload. Shelton said that decision was unrelated to Jones’ injury, which seemingly transpired during Wednesday’s contest.
The manager said it would be unfair to speculate that Jones’ injury was a result of his 11 days’ rest in between starts because he did throw a live bullpen session against hitters.
“The fact that we did ramp his intensity up, we still did make sure he threw — no one can predict when guys are going to get hurt,” Shelton said. “You can throw every fourth day for a full year and not get hurt. Then a guy goes out and throws one day and gets hurt.”
In 16 starts, Jones is 5-6 with a 3.56 ERA and 98 strikeouts in 91 innings. He’s been as valuable a member of the Pirates rotation as any, but the timing of Jones’ injury is about as manageable as it possibly could be for the club.
For one, the Pirates are just over a week away from the All-Star break. And other rotation options who have been injured for extended stretches like Marco Gonzales and Quinn Priester are both in the midst of rehab assignments with Triple-A Indianapolis.
Veteran southpaw Martin Perez, who missed nearly all of June with a groin injury, is back in the rotation and fresh off throwing 7 1/3 innings of one-run ball against the Cardinals on Thursday. Even Luis Ortiz, who has mostly operated as a long reliever this season, looked the part of a rotation stalwart in a spot start against the Reds last month.
As much as the Pirates will be challenged in Jones’ absence, it won’t be as insurmountable for the team as it would have been a month ago.
“The one thing is you can never have enough starting pitching depth,” Shelton said. “ ... You would never say ‘comforting’ because you can never have enough starting pitching, but the fact that we have some depth, I think, is important.”
Andrew Destin: adestin@post-gazette.com and @AndrewDestin1 on X
First Published: July 5, 2024, 8:54 p.m.
Updated: July 5, 2024, 11:30 p.m.
