The problem, if you can call it that, for Cam Jones is that’s he’s pretty good at baseball. Fielding the baseball. Hitting the baseball. Pitching the baseball.
And since he always has done it all while on the diamond, perhaps for the next chapter of his athletic future, it may be best for Jones to concentrate his efforts on a singular aspect of his game.
“What I would like to do is kinda get a shot at doing one and focus on one for however long until they decide, ‘Hey, we don’t think you’re good enough at this, let’s try the other side of things,’” Jones said. “I think it would be a lot easier for my body, my diet, my strength, everything if I could just show up to the field and know, ‘Hey, I’m pitching this day.’ And I don’t have to take fly balls or ground balls. In my perfect world, that’s what I’d like to do.”
For the next two weeks (and maybe more), however, Georgia Tech will just want their two-way star to continue doing what he has been doing the past 46 games. The 6-foot-1, 190-pound graduate of Georgia State enters Friday’s first game of a three-game series with Duke batting .330 with 25 RBIs, leading the Yellow Jackets with a 4.70 ERA over 46 innings pitched and fielding at a .996 clip in time spent on the mound, at first base, right field and left field.
Jones has played in every game for the Jackets (28-18, 12-12 ACC) after spending four years at Georgia State, where he was a first-team all-Sun Belt Conference selection three times and a finalist for the John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year Award.
“We had watched him at Georgia State and had always just kind of admired, not only his hitting, but then he’d come in to pitch in relief or whatever and we’re like, ‘Man, that guy’s pretty good,’” Tech coach Danny Hall said. “But I think more than anything, he’s just kind of a really, really good athlete, a good baseball player. Loves competing, and I think that’s the biggest thing.”
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Jones’ baseball lineage began, he said, mostly because his two older brothers were enamored with the sport. Growing up in Warner Robins the Jones boys were staples on the local baseball diamond and part of youth teams that advanced to the Little League World Series – Cam played at the event in 2013.
It wasn’t long after then that Jones began to receive recruiting interest from colleges. And while he certainly had the opportunity to join a big-name program or play in a Power 5 conference, he was urged by his father to follow his brother, Justin Jones, to Georgia State. Justin Jones played shortstop for the Panthers from 2015-18 and had a cup of coffee with the Los Angeles Angels organization after that.
“My dad kinda said, ‘A lot of people who go to these Power 5s, they kind of fizzle out and they’re not the main guy,’” Cam Jones explained. “He would always say, ‘It’s kind of awesome showing up to the field and my kid’s gonna be hitting first or second and playing shortstop every day and having the chance to show his game off.’”
But the youngest Jones wasn’t any sort of college standout from the get-go.
In the 2020 season, one cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, Jones had three hits in 11 at-bats. He went 2-1 on the mound and logged nine innings, allowing only one earned run. The following season Jones hit only .274 in 80 at-bats. He logged a team-high 65 innings, but was 1-8 with a 5.54 ERA in 13 starts.
Jones originally was recruited, and had signed to play for, former Georgia State coach Greg Frady. He decided to keep that commitment when State brought in Brad Stromdahl as head coach ahead of the 2020 season.
“I got to campus, and they weren’t really sure what I could do,” Jones said. “I’ve always loved hitting, being a position player, just that side of the game in general. I like challenges, and obviously hitting a baseball is about as hard as it can get in the sports world. I really wanted to focus on that. My freshman year at Georgia State, and really my sophomore year, too, I wasn’t the best hitter at all. Anyone who was there would tell you that. I just happen to be left-handed for throwing, so they’re like, ‘We’ll just let him stick with the pitching for now, and he’ll continue to do both, and then we’ll kind of just narrow it down what he’s best at.’
“I actually went and played summer ball (in 2020) in the Northwoods League (based in Minnesota), and they didn’t let me hit. I really wasn’t great. I was nowhere where I am now. I kind of just stuck with it and kept going and got to where I am now.”
Jones hit .355 his final two seasons with the Panthers and drove in 61 runs. Out of the bullpen in 2022 he allowed only 12 earned runs over 36 innings with 37 strikeouts, and as a reliever in 2023 he went 2-2 with a 2.04 ERA giving up only four earned runs in 11 outings.
With an extra season of eligibility to think about, Jones felt he could have been picked up on the second or third day of the 2023 MLB draft. But he put his name in the NCAA’s transfer portal anyway and headed to the Cape Cod League in Massachusetts for the summer.
Jones said he would spend the day playing ball in front of professional scouts, then return to his phone to find it inundated with calls and messages from college programs such as Tech, Florida State and Clemson, among others. Rich Wallace, the assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator at FSU, was working out the logistics for Jones to take an official visit to the Seminoles, but at the 11th hour Wallace became the head coach at Central Florida.
Talks at Clemson, Jones said, also sort of fizzled out, and the chance to remain in Atlanta was appealing. Hall bringing in Matt Taylor (Georgia State’s pitching coach from 2020-22) to be the Jackets’ new pitching coach enticed Jones as well.
So Jones opted to stick around Atlanta for another season, and his play both on the mound and at the plate has become an integral part of Tech’s chase to return to the postseason. Entering the starting rotation April 6, Jones threw seven shutout innings in a win over Virginia Tech on April 13 and tossed a complete game in a win over Miami on April 27.
Jones, who relies on a fastball, slider and change-up, also went 4-for-5 with a pair of doubles in that victory over the Hurricanes. In an April 19 win at Virginia, Jones drove in a season-high four runs.
“It’s a lot with practices and especially in the weight room,” Jones said of his ability to be sharp at the plate and on the mound. “Since I hit right and throw left, I’m using both sides of my body, whereas most people you have a dominant side of your body. I have to work on both sides and both hips and both shoulders and there’s a bunch of rotations, a lot of moving pieces. The game is, honestly, the easy part. It’s the preparation, the mobility, the stretching, the recovery, and all that is really the challenging part.
“On days that I’m throwing I’ll probably hit a little bit less just to take some stress off my arm. And on days after I throw I always show up to the field a little bit sore. So I really don’t like to hit in the cage too much. Just kind of make my reps count when I use them in batting practice or in the game.”
With a degree in sports administration and having minored in sociology, Jones hopes to become a college baseball coach when his playing days are over. But until then, he and the Jackets have seven regular-season games remaining, all vitally important in their quest to return to an NCAA regional.
And Jones will be right in the thick of that quest.
“I think he just loves it when he’s pitching, and he loves it when he’s hitting, and he’s very good at both. But I think more than anything, he’s just a competitor, and he wants to be in the middle of the action,” Hall said. “From the time he got here, we felt like he would help us on both sides. We kind of joked over the weekend like how dumb are we not to have him in the rotation sooner? But we’re happy he’s in that rotation now, and he’s made a big difference in our pitching staff.”
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