Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects: Unlucky Season of Jared Jones

One of the Pittsburgh Pirates more exciting pitching prospects is right-hander Jared Jones who despite getting unlucky, had a very solid campaign.

One of the Pittsburgh Pirates more exciting pitching prospects is right-handed pitcher Jared Jones. The Bucs drafted the flamethrower in the 2nd round of the 2020 draft. Seen as a very talented arm, the La Mirada product had a very solid 2021 season despite running into some bad luck.

Jones pitched a total of 66 innings at Low-A Bradenton. Jones was a strikeout machine, striking out 34.1% of all batters he faced. That was the 7th highest mark at his level among pitchers with at least 60 innings pitched. Plus he had a solid 0.82 HR/9 rate. But this came at the cost of a fairly poor 11.3% walk rate.

Jones had a bottom line of a 4.64 ERA and 1.47 WHIP. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. He got quite unlucky, posting a .385 batting average on balls in play. Not only was his unluckiness reflected in his high opponent BABIP, but Jones also had a 3.91 FIP and 3.75 xFIP. He had a solid 43.5% ground ball rate and 21.1% line drive rate, which are not bad by any means.

Now, most of Jones’s struggles came at the end of the year. His last 17 innings and 5 games saw him surrender a total of 17 earned runs. Even when he was pitching well, having a 3.12 ERA, 3.47 FIP, and 1.35 WHIP in his first 49 innings, batters still had a .390 BAbip against him.

Jones throws four pitches, all of which project as average or better. He’s a flamethrower who can get his four-seamer into the upper-90s. It’s considered a 60-projected offering by FanGraphs. His slider is another 60-projected pitch. His curveball? Another above-average, 55-grade pitch. His change-up isn’t one of his primary offerings, but it still projects as an average fourth offering (50-projected). The only thing is that Jones has very spotty command. Currently, he only has 20-grade command, the lowest possible grade a player can receive for a pitch or tool. It also only projects as just 35.

Right now, his command isn’t a huge worry. Jones only turned 20 back in early August. He has plenty of time to work with his command before he is considered major league ready. That probably won’t be for another one and a half years at the very least. Even if he manages slightly below average to below-average command, in the 40-45 grade range, he could be a very effective right-hander for the Pirates long term.

He’s just one of the many highly talented arms in the Pittsburgh Pirates system. If he can show improved command next season, I don’t think it’s out of the question we see him push for top-100 status. You could draw a lot of comparisons to now consensus top 100 prospect and former Pirates’ first-round pick, Shane Baz. Both were hard-throwing right-handers with some command issues coming out of high school. Baz, now in his age-22 season, is considered FanGraphs’ 60th best prospect. They throw with similar spin rates as well.

Overall, Jones’s season was promising. Sure, his surface numbers don’t look all that good, but they were inflated by some very bad batted ball luck. He was able to stave off the bad luck for most of the campaign, getting hit hard by it in his last few starts of the season. Regardless, he’ll enter 2022 as one of the Pittsburgh Pirates highest ceiling prospects.