The Pittsburgh Pirates will be receiving a boost to their starting rotation on Friday when right hander Jared Jones takes the mound for the first time in nearly 2 years for the club.
Jones’ last appearance in the Majors for the Pirates came on September 27th, 2024 when he tossed 4.1IP against the New York Yankees. After reporting for spring training the next year, he suffered an elbow injury prior to the regular season commencing. missed the entirety of the 2025 MLB campaign after undergoing internal brace surgery on his throwing arm.
“Pretty damn cool,” Jones said Thursday. “It took a lot of time, 12 months, almost exactly, of not playing baseball. You kind of get a sense that you need it. That’s kind of what I’ve learned about myself over that time. I’m just extremely grateful to be back.”
As a rookie Jones made 22 starts and logged 121 2/3 innings with a 4.14 earned run average, 26.2% strikeout rate and 7.7% walk rate.
Across 5 rehab starts the hard throwing righty posted a 2.89 ERA, 1.02 WHIP, with a 24:6 strikeout to walk ratio across 18.2IP. In his last outing, he threw 76 pitches which was enough for the Pirates brass to be confident that his arm strength had returned to its pre-injury form.
In a corresponding move, Carmen Mlodzinski will be shuffled to a relief role after going 4-3 with a 3.76 ERA across 11 games this season. His career ERA as a reliever is 2.63 across 94 appearances, and he should give Pittsburgh another weapon as a potential multi-inning reliever on their back end.
“We feel this gives the team the best chance to win in all areas,” Pirates manager Don Kelly told reporters. “Carmen has done a nice job as a starter, and he can also fill that role in the bullpen, multiple innings. That’s a starting pitcher-ish, bulk, multi-inning high leverage guy out of the [bullpen].”
The 24 year old Jones is under team control through 2029, which is the same timeline as ace Paul Skenes. The club also has promising hurlers Bubba Chandler and Braxton Ashcraft, alongside Mitch Keller who are also signed through at least 2028 as well. Then there’s top prospect Seth Hernandez who isn’t even 20 years old yet, but has been turning heads as he rises through the team’s farm system.
It’s an exciting group of arms for the Bucs as they continue to battle in the ultra-competitive NL Central this season. If Jones is able to recapture his rookie season form, that will go a long way towards helping the team keep pace with the rest of the teams in their division.
As of this writing, every team in the NL Central is currently above .500 with Pittsburgh sitting in last place despite having a 29-28 record.
Photo: J. Miers. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license.