Tim Benz: Pirates should give Jared Jones more pitches if he earns them

Russell Wilson’s first throwing attempt in Pittsburgh was a success. The new Steelers quarterback tossed out the first pitch at PNC Park on Friday night.

The former minor league baseball player got a warm ovation as he delivered a strike from the top of the mound.

Russell Wilson with a STRIKE for the first pitch in Pittsburgh tonight! pic.twitter.com/Yq57HrkYQc

— MLB (@MLB) April 19, 2024

Unfortunately, Wilson’s effort may be the only complete game we see at PNC Park all year. I’m pretty sure I saw manager Derek Shelton emerge from the dugout mid-delivery to pull Wilson in favor of Justin Fields.

Hey, we need Russ’ arm ready for September, not April. I’m sure that was the prudent thing to do.

#DontLetRussCookYet.

Yes, pitch counts are very much the topic du jour around the North Shore in the wake of Shelton’s decision to pull Jared Jones after just 59 pitches (50 of which were strikes) during a game last week in New York against the Mets. At the time, Jones had seven strikeouts through five innings, had allowed one hit, and the Pirates were winning 1-0.

They ended up losing 3-1.

I used the phrase “Shelton’s decision” because that’s how general manager Ben Cherington characterized it during his weekly appearance on 93.7 The Fan.

“The staff decided on their own that we’re going to hold him a little bit short this time,” Cherington said Sunday afternoon. “It’s a long season, and we want Jared Jones to be part of this for the long season. I really respect their decision. It’s not easy to do that in the middle of a game (when) you’ve got a chance to win with a guy pitching as well as he was. I really respect that decision, to have some perspective that this is a long war we’re fighting in 2024 and there’s these individual daily battles we’re trying to win. We’re trying to make decisions to do both: win the small battles and win the war.”

The problem is they didn’t win the small battle. They lost the “Battle of Queens” after Jones got pulled.

As their neighbors at PPG Paints Arena will tell Pirates, giving away those potential wins when they had a lead tends to loom large a few months later.

And if we are making war analogies, I’m not sure if Sherman’s March to the Sea would’ve been as effective if he shut down every skirmish between Atlanta and Savannah halfway through and said, “Eh, that’s good enough for one day. Let’s go a little bit further five days from now.”

Let’s be honest. Cherington “respects” Shelton’s decision because he helped make it. Whether he directly set a pitch/innings limit for Jones that night in New York or not, the infrastructure is in place within the Pirates organization to prioritize that strategy to what has become a nauseating degree. Top draft pick Paul Skenes is being limited to about three innings at a time in the minor leagues right now too.

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I embrace the goal of monitoring how much the franchise is taxing the arms of Jones and Skenes, but I thought that’s what the offseason and spring training was for. I thought all the offseason developmental work was designed so that if a pitcher that was cruising along, he could at least handle 65-75 pitches and a sixth or seventh inning once the games actually counted.

In theory, I appreciate and understand the attempt to protect young, valuable pitching assets like Skenes and Jones. What I don’t understand, though, is at some point don’t we need to embrace the basic math of it all?

There are 162 games of at least 27 outs that need to be recorded. And the more frequently you cap the innings of starters who could easily be pitching deeper into games, the more you are wearing out your bullpen pitchers.

By extension, those mid-to-long relievers who are lesser assets in terms of investment and talent are being overexposed and overused. Then, they start to break down instead of the starters.

Suddenly, it’s July and you look up and have a tattered bullpen that can’t bridge the last two or three innings when starters like Jones and Skenes actually do need to come out because they’ve thrown 95 pitches in seven innings of a 3-1 game on a Sunday afternoon in 95-degree heat.

For his part, Jones is being patient and trying to say the right things. He pitches Monday night against the Milwaukee Brewers, and I asked him if he expects to be given more innings and more pitches should he throw close to as well as he did last week against the Mets.

“I don’t know. It’s not my call,” Jones said Sunday. “I’m just going to go out there and be me. It’s what I’ve done every game (up) to this past time out. It’s my game plan going forward.”

Just being him was good enough to give the Pirates one of the most efficient starts in recent team history. If Jones gets capped once again — against one of the best hitting teams in baseball — then those bullpen arms better be just as efficient to close out the game.

Or else it may be another “battle” lost, and the once intriguing Pirates will be below .500 for the first time all year.

#LetJaredCook