Jared Jones, pitching staff carrying Pirates early in the season | Baseball Bar-B-Cast

Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman marvel at the prized rookie’s start to the season on the mound and express concern for Pittsburgh’s offense, especially Oneil Cruz. Hear the full conversation on “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

JAKE MINTZ: The Pittsburgh Pirates are 11 and 7. They are in an L2. I feel slightly better about the Pirates.

JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: I agree.

JAKE MINTZ: Slightly better mostly because of the pitching staff. These arms are legit. Jared Jones, one of the most impressive pitching performances I've seen in a while. Downright dominant-- just, like, dominant against the Mets. He is 22 years old, and he made the Mets look like a little league team.

JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: He is now up to 32 strikeouts and 2 walks through his first four starts of his career. If you watched him in spring, I was like, this looks like an extremely good Major League pitcher. And that is what he has been so far through four starts.

JAKE MINTZ: I just refuse to believe that Paul Skenes is going to be better than this when he comes up. Like, Paul Skenes is amazing. But if Paul Skenes comes up and does 3/4 of what Jared Jones has done so far, people would be losing their minds. And like, this dude is the real deal.

JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: Yeah.

JAKE MINTZ: The real deal.

JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: But it's also a reminder of, like, Jones high school pick, 2020, he got better every season. And whether that's a credit to him, whether it's a credit to Pirates PD-- I'm sure it's a mix of the two. He had made the progressions that he had proven it at every level in a way that Paul Skenes is now doing in his short time in pro ball.

But it's not the same thing. And that's why Jones got that opportunity right out of camp. If they could go, like, every other day Jones, Martín, Pérez, Skenes, that's hilarious. But it's not surprising--

JAKE MINTZ: seeing Jared Jones? It was Jerry Jones against Jose Quintana last night at Citi Field. It was an unbelievable vibe switch every time the inning changed. Martín Pérez has reached that guy knows how to pitch territory. Like--

JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: Absolutely.

JAKE MINTZ: He is just a lefty. He is keeping guys off balance.

JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: He's done that before, and it would not surprise me at all if he can do something between his miraculous all-star season in 2022 and his year of regression in 2023. Like, he was-- there was no way he's going to replicate his all-star season, and I also don't think he was as bad as he looked last season because he knows what he's doing.

JAKE MINTZ: Just to wrap things up on the Pirates, though, we only feel slightly better about them because this offense kind of stinks. Right now playing above their skis. I'm worried about Oneil Cruz specifically against left-handed hitting. He has looked really out of sorts. I think his like OPS against lefties in his big league career is under 550.

JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: For his career now, 831 OPS against right handers, 493 against lefties, and yeah, that is troublesome. And it seems that last night, they moved him-- they finally started to move him down in the order. I know that was against the left hander.

It'll be interesting to see if that changes for just in general. But I don't know. I don't know what the right solution is for this Pirates lineup because they're searching right now.