JOE JACQUES, LEFT HANDED PITCHER
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Born: March 11, 1995 Height: 6′ 4″ Weight: 210 Bats: Left Throws: Left Drafted: 33rd Round, 984th Overall, 2018 How Acquired: Draft College: Manhattan College Agent: N/A |
WTM’s PLAYER PROFILE |
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The Pirates drafted Jacques as a fifth year senior from Manhattan College, where he was a walk-on and earned a starting job as a freshman. After that season he dropped down to throwing sidearm and got better results, with a 3.13 ERA on a team that had a 5.57 mark. He returned to a higher arm slot for his junior year and regressed, then hurt his back and redshirted a year. As a fifth-year senior in 2018, and back to throwing sidearm, he had a 2.61 ERA in 38 innings, with a 38:12 K:BB ratio. He cut down on his walks in each of his last two years, while improving his strikeout rate to 9.0 per nine innings in 2018. He did miss some time with a lat injury. Jacques throws two- and four-seam fastballs that sit in the upper-80s. His out pitch is a sweeping slider, and he also throws a change and is adding a cutter.
2018 Except for one late-season game with Morgantown, Jacques pitched out of the Bristol bullpen. He had a large platoon split, which makes sense for a sidearm lefty: he allowed a .625 OPS to left-handed hitters and .819 to right-handed hitters. Jacques had a rough time early, with a 17.47 ERA in his first five outings. In his last dozen outings with Bristol, his ERA was 2.30. Walks were a problem throughout. 2019 Jacques started the season at Greensboro, but moved up to Bradenton at the end of May. He pitched mostly in multi-inning outings, going as long as four a couple times. He also made one appearance in Altoona at the end of the year. Jacques was generally effective and got more so after the early season, mainly because he cut down on the walks. He was equally effective overall against hitters from both sides, the one difference being that he had more trouble with walks against left-handed hitters but they had little success driving the ball against him. He allowed a line of 185/349/215 to left-handed hitters and 208/285/289 to right-handed hitters. He didn’t strike out a lot of hitters, resulting in xFIPs that were much higher than his ERA at both Greensboro (4.59) and Bradenton (3.50). It’s possible, though, that for a pitcher with a low sidearm delivery, K rate might not have quite the same predictive value that it normally does. 2020 2021 The Pirates moved Jacques up to Indianapolis and he spent the season in the bullpen there. He was very effective most of the year, but had a terrible month of July and also had trouble in six September outings. His opponents’ OPS was almost exactly league average. Jacques had a big platoon split, allowing an OPS of .823 to right-handed batters and only .622 to left-handed batters. 2022 Jacques was hurt at the start of the season, but worked his way back to Indianapolis in mid-June. He improved over the previous season, apart from a much lower K rate. He was very steady, with a monthly ERA ranging from 2.63 to 4.32. His platoon split was huge, as right-handed hitters put up an .845 OPS against him while left-handed hitters were close to automatic outs, going 4-for-47 with a .257 OPS. Jacques is interesting due to his motion, but the three-batter minimum isn’t going to help his chances in the majors. It’s certainly possible to work around it, but not for a manager tied to a robotic approach of always using certain pitchers in certain, preordained innings. It’d be interesting to see him get selected in the Rule 5 draft by a team intrigued by his numbers against left-handed hitters.
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