Electric Pittsburgh Pirates rookie Jared Jones is piling up strikeouts and silencing doubters

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Jared Jones understands the plan. He totally gets that the Pittsburgh Pirates are doing what they can to protect the future — both his and theirs — by being cautious with the precocious 22-year-old's electric right arm.

In time, the kid gloves will come off. They have to. Jones knows this. So he's trying to stay patient while simultaneously doing everything he can to speed up the process.

Jones cleared another major hurdle Saturday, striking out 10 without a walk over seven near-perfect innings in a 1-0 victory over Colorado. He mixed a fastball that reached triple digits with a slider and change-up that left the Rockies either swinging and missing or looking back at home-plate umpire Stu Scheurwater in surprise after taking a called strike three.

Yet even more than his impeccable command, what stood out to Jones was the vote of confidence he got after he walked into the dugout following the sixth inning. A part of him expected manager Derek Shelton to come over and tell him “good job, that's it.”

Only Shelton didn't. Instead, Jones walked back to the mound for the seventh for the first time in his major league career.

“Obviously, I’ve had a short leash before, and that was to protect me,” Jones said. “Having him let me go out for the seventh, yeah, it pumped me up.”

Sure looked like it.

Jones fanned Brendton Doyle and Ryan McMahon then got Elias Diaz to tap Jones' 96th and final pitch to second base for a routine ground ball to finish one of the most dominant outings by a Pittsburgh starter in recent memory.

“I think we’re seeing the full arsenal now,” Shelton said.

One that Shelton admits he didn't necessarily see coming when Jones arrived in Bradenton for spring training. Jones, a second-round pick in 2020, had a solid season in the minors last summer but nothing that suggested the leap he's made with remarkable ease seem imminent.

How quickly things have changed.

Jones beat out Quinn Priester and Luis Ortiz among others to earn a spot in the starting rotation and hasn't looked back. Jones now has 52 strikeouts against just five walks across seven starts, showcasing the kind of command typically reserved for far more experienced players.

The Rockies watched a “ton of video” on Jones before facing him for the first time. Yet all they managed was a clean double down the left-field line by Diaz leading off the fifth. The other 21 batters that stepped in against Jones found themselves heading back to the dugout.

“The kid is very good and he has a great arm and he throws a lot of strikes, especially for a young pitcher who throws that hard,” Colorado manager Bud Black said.

Yet asked if he's ever gotten into a groove like this before, Jones just shrugged.

“I’m just going out there and doing me,” he said. “I’m sure I’ve had some spurts in my career where I’ve pitched just like this.”

Maybe, but not at this level. And not this consistently. And not with so many eyes on him. The 6-foot-1, 190-pound Jones has drawn comparisons to Atlanta ace Spencer Strider, though Jones is trying not to get ahead of himself.

“If you throw the ball well, people start seeing things,” he said.

And what opponents might see in the very near future is a Pittsburgh rotation anchored by Jones and 21-year-old Paul Skenes, the top overall pick in the 2023 draft who has a 0.39 ERA at Triple-A Indianapolis and looks every bit as major-league ready as Jones.

Jones, who joked he and Skenes play “too much” Fortnite together, dismissed the idea he and Skenes are trying to outdo each other with each passing start.

“I wouldn't say it's competitive,” he said. “I think every pitcher here wants everyone else to shove, and that’s exactly what’s going on. So it’s fun to watch him pitch, and I’m sure he feels the same way about me.”

Yasmani Grandal, who spent the last few weeks catching Skenes while on a rehab assignment before making his Pittsburgh debut behind the plate on Saturday, called Jones far from a “one-trick pony." Ditto Skenes, who impressed Grandal with both his talent and his preparation.

“Both of those guys are pretty electric,” Grandal said.

And pretty young too, one of the reasons the Pirates are taking such a deliberate approach with both. Skenes has slowly been building up his pitch count at Indianapolis and Shelton raised eyebrows last month when he pulled Jones after five innings and 59 pitches (50 of them strikes) against the New York Mets.

General manager Ben Cherington defended the decision, stressing the organization is trying to keep its eye on the big picture and not ask too much of Jones too soon.

One person thinks Jones is already ready for more. It's the player who spent Saturday watching Jones dot up the strike zone with alarming frequency.

“If you don’t go seven innings or more with him, it’s not a good outing,” Grandal said. “That’s how highly I think of him.”

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Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Jared Jones delivers during the first inning of a baseball game against the Colorado Rockies in Pittsburgh, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Jared Jones delivers during the first inning of a baseball game against the Colorado Rockies in Pittsburgh, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, the man's daughter said Saturday.

Maryam Kamalmaz said in an interview with The Associated Press that during a meeting in Washington this month with eight senior American officials she was presented with detailed intelligence about the presumed death of her father, Majd, a psychotherapist from Texas.

The officials told her that on a scale of one to 10, their confidence level about her father's death was a “high nine." She said she asked whether other detained Americans had ever been successfully recovered in the face of such credible information, and was told no.

“What more do I need? That was a lot of high-level officials that we needed to confirm to us that he’s really gone. There was no way to beat around the bush,” Maryam Kamalmaz said.

She said officials told her they believe the death occurred years ago, early in her father's captivity. In 2020, she said, officials told the family that they had reason to believe that he had died of heart failure in 2017, but the family held out hope and U.S. officials continued their pursuit.

But, she said, “Not until this meeting did they really confirm to us how credible the information is and the different levels of (verification) it had to go through."

She did not describe the intelligence she learned.

A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment Saturday. The FBI's Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell issued a statement that did not offer any update on Kamalmaz but said that no matter how much time has passed, it continues to work “on behalf of the victims and their families to recover all U.S hostages and support the families whose loved ones are held captive or missing.”

Majd Kamalmaz disappeared in February 2017 at the age of 59 while traveling in Syria to visit an elderly family member. The FBI has said he was stopped at a Syrian government checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus and had not been heard from since.

Kamalmaz is one of multiple Americans who have disappeared in Syria, including the journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in 2012 at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus. Syria has publicly denied holding Americans in captivity.

In 2020, in the final months of the Trump administration, senior officials visited Damascus for a high-level meeting aimed at negotiating release of the Americans. But the meeting proved unfruitful, with the Syrians not providing any proof-of-life information and making demands that U.S. officials deemed unreasonable. U.S. officials have said they are continuing to try to bring home Tice.

The New York Times first reported on the presumed death of Majd Kamalmaz.

FILE - Rep. Al Green, right, listens as Samar Hamwi, sister of Majd Kamalmaz, speaks during the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, a campaign led by family members of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad, news conference on Tuesday, July 4, 2023 in Houston. U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, his daughter, Maryam Kamalmaz, said Saturday, May 18. (Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle via AP, file)

FILE - Maryam Kamalmaz poses for a photo in her home in Grand Prairie, Texas, Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024. U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, Maryam Kamalmazr said Saturday, May 18. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, file)

FILE - Maryam Kamalmaz hold a photo of her father with some of his 14 grandchildren in Grand Prairie, Texas, Jan. 17, 2024. U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, Maryam Kamalmaz said Saturday, May 18. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)