Jones hoping that 2024's rollercoaster fuels resurgence in '25

DENVER -- After the Rockies’ fifth game of the 2024 season, Nolan Jones sat in a Chicago hotel room and cried for four hours.

“When we don’t do well, it hurts the fans,” Jones said. “But sometimes they don’t understand that it hurts us 10 times more.”

The young left fielder had a base hit roll under his glove as he charged it in the sixth inning of that day’s contest against the Cubs. The ball went all the way to the ivy-covered wall at Wrigley Field as two runs scored. Jones’ throw back toward the infield was low and skipped off the glove of second baseman Brendan Rodgers, enabling a third run to score.

It wasn’t the first ignominious defensive moment in the young season for Jones. The day before, he dropped a routine fly ball that glanced off his glove in Arizona -- it would have ended the fifth inning, but instead, the D-backs scored their fourth run of the game.

Hence the tears of anguish.

“I had high expectations for myself based on what I did last year,” said Jones, who finished fourth in National League Rookie of the Year voting in 2023. “And then to run into failure so early, with error after error, I was just thinking, ‘What is going on here?’ The whole offseason, I worked my tail off. And then five games into the year, I’m looking up and I have four errors.”

In 2023, Jones made two errors in the outfield despite being a converted infielder. Overall, he had a breakout year in which he became the first rookie in MLB history to have 20 home runs, 20 steals and 19 outfield assists in the same season. He did all of that in 106 games after making his Rockies debut on May 26.

Going into his age-26 campaign in 2024, the sky seemed to be the limit for a player with major raw power at the plate, great speed for a man of his size and a cannon for an arm that ranked him No. 1 in MLB with an average arm strength of 98.9 mph. But the brutal first week of the season was just a painful portent of things to come.

As shortstop Ezequiel Tovar and center fielder Brenton Doyle took big steps forward in 2024, further solidifying their place at the center of Colorado’s efforts to build a core for the future, Jones took a big step back. The question for Jones now becomes: Will he have a resurgence in ’25 that puts him back into that echelon of young players the Rockies see as part of the long-term solution in Colorado?

“I felt that in 2023, I put myself in a good position to be a centerpiece of this group of Tovar, Doyle and these younger guys that are here and coming to be part of that future,” he said. “And I don’t see that as being eliminated. There’s still a ton of skill and talent in there.”

Just over three weeks after the early string of errors, a back injury sent Jones to the injured list. The back issues combined with a knee injury limited him to 79 games over which he posted a .641 OPS, nearly 300 points below his OPS from 2023.

In 191 plate appearances prior to the All-Star break, Jones hit .203/.311/.313. He improved that to .269/.340/.333 over his final 106 plate appearances, though his back issues hindered his ability to hit for much power.

The injuries and his inability to meet his own lofty expectations took its toll on a man who holds intense feelings when it comes to the game he loves and the way he plays it.

“I’ve struggled mentally at times,” Jones said. “I lose sleep over baseball. But it’s taught me a lot of perspective on life in general.”

His perspective was further refined in August, when he and his fiancée welcomed their first child. The process was an emotional rollercoaster for Jones, with the jubilation of becoming a father immediately followed by concern for his newborn daughter, who had trouble breathing and had to spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit.

“Some people don’t understand that there’s a 100% human aspect to all of us as athletes,” Jones said.

As he sat in the Rockies’ dugout at Coors Field during the club’s final series of the regular season and looked out toward left field, Jones reflected on the season that had been. It wasn’t what he expected, nor what he wanted.

On that April night in Chicago, as his tears dried, Jones received texts from veteran teammates Charlie Blackmon and Kris Bryant. Blackmon and Bryant then spoke to Jones to remind him that it was still very early in the season.

Despite Jones' travails in 2024, he’s still quite early in his career. And he hopes to take what happened last season and turn it into fuel for the next one.

“It’s been difficult, for sure,” he said. “But I’m blessed. I get to play a game for a living. And I get to do it here, in probably the most beautiful stadium in the Major Leagues.

“I’m in a position I’ve dreamed of my whole life.”