PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 There was no apology, no second-guessing. The Pirates mindset was they were not going risk the health of Jared Jones no matter the situation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cComing off of surgery and going five-ups,\u201d said Pirates manager Don Kelly postgame. \u201cI mean, we actually pushed him an extra inning there, he was throwing the ball so well and that sucks, Under normal circumstances, perfect game, he\u2019d continue to go. Coming off a surgery and everything, you just can\u2019t push him there.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a life-long baseball fan, then player, now manager, Kelly asked if he understood the frustration from the fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s a tough one, man, and I think that we\u2019ve talked about it before,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cHealth is the most important thing, winning the game and then personal accomplishments, third, and wanting guys to stay healthy. Health is the number one thing with these guys because we need Jared for the rest of the season throwing the ball like that. Trying to push him right now when he\u2019s only had five-ups, there\u2019s just no way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The follow up was if he was tempted to just ride his starter who hadn\u2019t allowed a baserunner through six innings with only 77 pitches, which matched a season high.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, there wasn\u2019t,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cHis health is too important and having not even approached anything like nine innings and him at 80 pitches in essence already, you\u2019re looking at 120 coming off of surgery, there was no way.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Jones, there were smiles postgame. Where the last time he stood at his locker in front of reporters after a start and discussed being lit up and needing to be better. This is more of what he expects out of himself. <\/p>\n
He understood the decision to leave after six innings.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“It does suck,\u201d Jones said. \u201cSomething’s cool coming on, but I’m on what, my eighth start off of surgery? I completely understand it and it is what it is.”<\/p>\n
Bigger picture for Jones was he felt like a major contributor to the rotation after 15 months of watching.<\/p>\n
“It was fun,\u201d Jones said. \u201cFelt good the whole game. It was just fun playing baseball.”<\/p>\n
How he did it?<\/p>\n
“Just went back to the bread and butter: fastball-slider,\u201d Jones said. \u201cOne changeup, but fastball-slider the entire game and just kind of felt like myself out there again.” <\/p>\n
Jones started off with 10 straight fastballs and said he trusted catcher Henry Davis but did wonder \u2018when he was going to click another button\u2019 for a different pitch. But it worked, and so did Jones.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt the best I have all year.”<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything was working,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cFastball velo was up, slider was really good. I don\u2019t think he even threw too many changeups (he threw one changeup). The slider was so good and the fastball, the fastball command was elite.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with all that, there was no way Jones was taking a perfect game into the seventh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 There was no apology, no second-guessing. The Pirates mindset was they were not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[2111,1558,65822,65824,363,2240,99],"class_list":["post-751747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-baseball","tag-don-kelly","tag-jared-jones","tag-mlb","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}