Nolan Jones, to borrow a phrase used by Guardians radio announcer Tom Hamilton, is scuffling. Or maybe “scuffling” doesn’t quite describe hitting .160 in mid-May more than a quarter of the way through the season.
The Guardians selected Jones in the second round of the 2016 draft out of Holy Ghost Prep High School in Philadelphia. He made his debut with the Guardians on July 8, 2022.
Jones played in only 28 games as a rookie. He batted .244 with two home runs and 13 RBI. The Guardians concluded he would not break into the everyday lineup, so they traded him to the Rockies for minor-league infielder Juan Brito.
Jones, now 27, in 2023 with the Rockies blossomed into the young outfielder the Guardians projected when they drafted him. He hit .297, homered 20 times, drove in 62 runs and stole 20 bases.
The Guardians reacquired Jones from Colorado when spring training ended in March of this year by trading popular utility player Tyler Freeman to the Rockies.
Jones went 0-for-4 on May 16 when the Guardians lost, 5-4, to the Reds in Cincinnati. He is batting .160. He has batted 100 times over 36 games and struck out 35 times. Only Kyle Manzardo (41) has struck out more. But Manzardo leads the Guardians with 10 home runs and 25 RBI. Jones has two home runs and seven RBI.
“Obviously, it gets frustrating day after day, feeling like you’re putting in the work and doing everything you can and nothing shows up at 7:05 (start of a game),” Jones said after getting two hits May 14 in a 9-5 loss to the Brewers. “A couple hits here, a couple hits there. My ultimate goal — it sounds cliche — but I want to help this team win.
“I feel like I’m getting better in the outfield, but that’s not something that I’ve been the best at and haven’t been doing for a long time. My best ability to help this team win is at the plate and not doing that kind of feels like it takes me out of what I do best. I don’t even remember the last time I hit a single.”
Jones has a total of 16 hits — eight singles, six doubles and the two home runs. He singled twice in the loss to the Brewers. His last single prior to hitting a pair May 14 was in a 13-3 loss to the Red Sox on April 27.
The Guardians will have five outfielders when Lane Thomas returns from a wrist injury — Steven Kwan, Jones, Jhonkensey Noel, Will Brennan and Thomas. Teams normally carry four outfielders. Plus, Angel Martinez can play shortstop, second base or the outfield.
Noel is struggling, too. He is hitting .154 with two home runs and nine RBI.
Freeman played in only seven games with the Rockies before being sidelined with an oblique strain April 13. He was hitting .091 in 11 at-bats. He is on a rehab assignment the the Rockies Triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes.
Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum
Each week, this part of Cleveland Beat focuses on a player from the past more famous for his colorful nickname than his birth name.
This is the perfect time to look at the career of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson because this past week Commissioner Rob Manfred removed Jackson (and Pete Rose among others) from the banned list. The declaration makes Jackson and the others eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Jackson isn’t in the Baseball Hall of Fame yet, but a museum in his hometown of Greenville, S.C., is dedicated to his baseball exploits.
Jackson was born on July 16, 1897, in Pickens County, S.C. When he was six years old he swept cotton dust off floors at a place called Pelzer Mill to earn money to help support his family. He was a gifted baseball player from the first time he picked up a bat.
By 1908, he was playing with a semi-pro team known as Greenville Spinners. On June 6 of that year, he began the game wearing a new set of cleats. They caused blisters, so he removed them. He walked to the plate in his socks in the seventh inning and hammered “the longest home run in the history of Memminger Street Park,” according to the museum bio of Jackson.
As he was rounding third base, a fan in the stands shouted, “You shoeless son of a gun!” Jackson played in 1,332 Major League games from 1908-20 and wore cleats in all of them, but because of that one incident and one boisterous fan he had a nickname for life.
Two months after his “shoeless” game, Jackson signed with the Philadelphia Athletics. The A’s traded him to the Cleveland Naps in 2010. Jackson’s first full season in the majors was in 2011 with the Naps. He hit .408 in 571 at-bats over 147 games. That .408 mark is a rookie record that still stands and is sixth-best all time for a single season.
Jackson, a 6-foot-1, 200-pound outfielder, compiled a career batting average of .356 playing for the Athletics, Naps and White Sox. He homered only 54 times, but he drove in 792 runs. He batted 4,981 times. Remarkably, he struck out only 233 times.
“Shoeless” Joe Jackson in 1917, two years before the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, when players from the White Sox were accused of fixing the World Series that season. (Associated Press file)
According to the Joe Jackson Museum bio, Ted Williams, the Hall of Fame outfielder from the Red Sox, a 19-time All-Star and the last major-leaguer to hit .400 (.406 in 1941) had this to say about Jackson:
“When I was younger, the Red Sox used to stop sometimes in Greenville, South Carolina. That’s Joe Jackson’s home. And he was still alive. Oh, how I wish I had known that and stopped in to talk hitting with him.”
Jackson never learned to read or write because he began working when most kids his age were in kindergarten or first grade. But when his playing days ended, he and his wife, Katie, ran a successful dry-cleaning business and later a successful barbeque restaurant.
Jackson was one of eight White Sox players indicted on charges of throwing the 1919 World Series. Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned Jackson and the others from playing Major League baseball for life.
Jackson maintained his innocence throughout the rest of his life. He died of a heart attack at age 64 in 1951.
For the record, Jackson hit .375 in the 1919 World Series with the Reds. No player on either team hit for a higher average. His 12 hits (although in eight games because in 1919 the World Series was best-of-nine) stood as a World Series record until Bobby Richardson of the Yankees hit safely 13 times in the 1964 World Series.
Jackson accounted for 11 of the 20 White Sox runs. He played errorless ball and threw out five Reds baserunners. He hit the only home run of the World Series.