Baseball Prospectus

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Statistics for All Levels

Plate Discipline

Preseason Long-Term Forecast (Beyond the 2019 Projections)

Comparable Players (Similarity Index 79)

Rank	Score	Name	Year	Run Average	Trend
1	91	Jose Valverde	2011	2.61
2	91	Jay Witasick	2006	6.75
3	89	Kiko Calero	2008	3.86
4	87	Michael Gonzalez	2011	5.23
5	87	Kevin Gregg	2011	5.28
6	86	Glen Perkins	2016	9.00
7	86	Darren O'Day	2016	3.77
8	86	Troy Percival	2003	4.01
9	85	Frank Francisco	2013	4.26
10	85	Will Ohman	2011	4.39
11	85	Mike Dunn	2018	9.00
12	84	Jason Frasor	2011	3.90
13	84	Octavio Dotel	2007	4.70
14	84	Dan Wheeler	2011	4.56
15	84	Eric Gagne	2009	0.00	DNP
16	83	John Axford	2016	4.25
17	83	Jeff Nelson	2000	3.23
18	83	Huston Street	2017	0.00
19	83	Michael Wuertz	2012	0.00	DNP
20	83	Joe Thatcher	2015	3.18
21	82	Joe Page	1951	0.00	DNP
22	82	Joakim Soria	2017	3.86
23	82	Tyler Clippard	2018	3.80
24	82	Luis Vizcaino	2008	5.48
25	81	Skip Lockwood	1980	6.11
26	81	David Hernandez	2018	2.81
27	81	Todd Worrell	1993	6.52
28	81	Justin Miller	2011	0.00	DNP
29	81	Fernando Salas	2018	4.50
30	80	Grant Balfour	2011	2.47
31	80	Francisco Rodriguez	2015	2.37
32	80	Shawn Kelley	2017	7.27
33	80	Jeff Montgomery	1995	3.84
34	80	Kazuhiro Sasaki	2001	3.24
35	80	Jim Brewer	1971	1.88
36	80	Lee Smith	1991	2.34
37	80	Jesse Orosco	1990	4.87
38	79	Eddie Guardado	2004	2.78
39	79	Rollie Fingers	1980	3.06
40	79	Boone Logan	2018	5.91
41	79	Rick Aguilera	1995	2.60
42	79	Jason Motte	2015	3.72
43	79	Joaquin Benoit	2011	3.39
44	79	Tippy Martinez	1983	2.61
45	79	Jay Howell	1989	1.69
46	79	Tyler Walker	2009	3.06
47	79	Paul Assenmacher	1994	3.27
48	79	Tony Sipp	2017	6.03
49	79	Fernando Rodriguez	2017	0.00	DNP
50	78	Akinori Otsuka	2005	4.02
51	78	Jose Veras	2014	4.89
52	78	Armando Benitez	2006	3.52
53	78	Roberto Hernandez	1998	4.16
54	78	Jerry Blevins	2017	2.94
55	78	Kerry Wood	2010	3.33
56	77	Scott Linebrink	2010	4.87
57	77	Paul Shuey	2004	0.00	DNP
58	77	Matt Miller	2005	1.82
59	77	Jim Gott	1993	2.67
60	77	Jeff Brantley	1997	3.86
61	77	Juan Oviedo	2015	0.00	DNP
62	77	Rafael Soriano	2013	3.24
63	77	Enrique Romo	1981	5.83
64	77	Brendan Donnelly	2005	4.13
65	76	Mike Stanton	2000	4.24
66	76	Stan Belinda	2000	8.49
67	76	Justin Speier	2007	3.06
68	76	Chris Hatcher	2018	5.70
69	76	Manny Parra	2016	0.00	DNP
70	76	John Hiller	1976	2.75
71	76	Kyle Farnsworth	2009	5.30
72	75	Julio Santana	2006	9.72
73	75	Alejandro Pena	1992	4.07
74	75	Grant Jackson	1976	2.42
75	75	Aaron Heilman	2012	0.00	DNP
76	75	Roy Face	1961	4.21
77	75	Tony Barnette	2017	5.65
78	75	Aurelio Lopez	1982	5.93
79	75	Eric Plunk	1997	5.07
80	75	Sergio Romo	2016	2.64
81	75	Billy Taylor	1995	0.00	DNP
82	75	Guillermo Mota	2007	5.92
83	75	Matt Thornton	2010	2.67
84	75	Norm Charlton	1996	4.52
85	75	Brian Wilson	2015	0.00	DNP
86	74	Steve Delabar	2017	0.00	DNP
87	74	Kevin Jepsen	2018	7.02
88	74	Pedro Feliciano	2010	3.45
89	74	Randy Myers	1996	3.68
90	74	Tom Gorzelanny	2016	21.00
91	74	Casey Fien	2017	12.75
92	74	Juan Cruz	2012	3.03
93	74	Pete Richert	1973	3.18
94	73	Damaso Marte	2008	4.02
95	73	Mike Jackson	1998	1.55
96	73	Jon Rauch	2012	4.37
97	73	Fernando Rodney	2010	4.37
98	73	J.J. Putz	2010	3.00
99	73	Todd Jones	2001	5.16
100	73	Dave Veres	2000	3.09

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2019		Due to publishing agreements, the 2019 player comments and team essays are only available in the Baseball Prospectus 2019 book (available in hardcopy, and soon e-book and Kindle).
2018		Jones uses his 6-foot-5 frame and his “I will hold this ball in the sky and smite you with it” motion to generate high-90s velocity and a brutal slider to phenomenal results. The downside is that after an oddly heavy workload in a 99-loss season in 2013, Jones underwent Tommy John surgery. Last year was another lost season due to nerve repositioning surgery in his elbow. If he’s healthy, Jones is a legitimate late-inning relief option, which is a particularly good result given his pedigree, but the first part of this sentence inspires less confidence than his ability to get hitters out when he's able to take the mound.
2017		It's easy to get mesmerized by Jones' arm delivery. Out of the stretch, the pitching arm is flailed behind him like a fishing lure. Ah, fishing. A hobby most often associated with inner peace, and with humankind connecting with nature in a deeply personal way. Of course, once you hook your prey, then it's a mad dash to reel it in. Maybe that's what makes his delivery so deceptively dangerous. He makes no attempt the hide the ball, but then again he brandishes two plus gambits—upper-90s heat and one of the league's hardest sliders—so you have a 50-50 chance of being right. He'll hook many a guppy with both offerings, and if it's the slider, don't bother—batters hit .094 against it. By comparison, batters hit .170 off Andrew Miller. And like Miller, it took Jones some time to reach his current position It took him until age 25 to reach Double-A and also a year for his body to work in a new UCL. He's locked into a team-friendly contract with club options through 2021, so if he does become a closer, somebody in the front office is getting a gold star. Or at least a new fishing boat.
2016		Jones' 2014 was the kind of injury nightmare from which hardly any pitcher can be expected to make it back. He had back surgery in May and Tommy John surgery in late July. The fact that he even returned to a big-league mound in August 2015, then, is a fairly major victory. The fact that he was still sitting 98 with his fastball and near 90 with his slider borders on miraculous. The fact that he struck out 27 and walked six in 19 appearances is downright ridiculous. This says as much about 2015 on the South Side as about Jones, but he was one of the best stories of the Sox's season.
2015		After the White Sox traded Addison Reed one winter ago, Jones looked poised for a breakout season, with an upper-90s fastball and wipeout slider straight out of the Closer's Cookbook. But after two bad outings, he spent a majority of the season recovering form back surgery and, in the process of recovering, felt a burning sensation in his elbow. This led to Tommy John surgery in late July. (He ended up as one of two pitchers in the majors with an infinite ERA. Read the rest of the book closely and you'll know the other.) We've likely seen the last of Jones until 2016, at which point he'll be 30. He still has a fighting chance to make an impact, but, as is in a William Faulkner novel or a Christopher Nolan film, time is the enemy.
2014		Jones struggled out of the gate last spring but soon righted the ship, working his way up the bullpen pecking order before settling into a set-up role. His upper-90s fastball can pop, sparkle and buzz electric, but it was the increased use and in-season improvement of his vicious slider that had hitters flailing at pitches out of the zone and muttering their way back to the dugout. Jones gets swinging strikes at a rate that rivals the game�s most dominant closers, a fraternity he's now poised to join after the trade of Addison Reed.
2013		Is that why they call it relief pitching? With the pressure of refining his game lifted upon moving to the bullpen, Jones thrived. His four-seam fastball is regularly three-digit, and while the slider isn't as good as hoped from a breaking pitch backing such high velocity, it comes in 10 miles per hour slower and breaks. Focusing on just two pitches should allow him to maintain his effectiveness over the years as his velocity declines with age, and if he can keep his walk rate low, he has the stuff to pitch high-leverage innings.
2012		After an aborted attempt by the team to make him a starter, Mr. Jones put a wiggle in the development staff�s collective stride by thriving in a relief role last year. The towering right-hander used his high-90s fastball to greater effect in shorter stints, amping up his strikeout rate while keeping his walks in check. Not everything was ventilated slacks, however, as Jones still needs to better locate his power curve, and the only benefit to being 25 in the Southern League is cheaper car insurance than your teammates. Still, if Jones can consolidate his gains this year he may soon be able to fill a role at the back of the Sox bullpen.
2011		Moving Nathan Jones into the rotation gave him the reps to try and add a consistent breaking pitch to his menu of heat that tops out just shy of triple-digits.
2010		Nathan Jones is a bit of a project who has been slow to develop, but he's tall, long, and can touch 98 mph with his fastball.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Nate Jones threw 5,541 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2011 and 2021, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2021, he relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (96mph) and Slider (87mph). He also rarely threw a Sinker (93mph) and Change (89mph).