Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-26145872-20160224202704/@comment-734582-20160316153239

MlGshinobi wrote: Naruto couldn't fuse with the frogs because of Kurama. When Pa tried to fuse with naruto the nine tails kicked him out. So naruto intelligently used shadow clones to compensate. Like I said, naruto surpassed Jiraiya overall at that point Shadowclones he needed to prepare beforehand. If Naruto switched positions with Jiraiya in the story, he wouldn't have Sage mode. He clearly needed it to keep up with Pain. He wouldn't get a chance to set it up.

Furthermore, the entire point of the extra summons would be to counter Pain's summons. Jiraiya wasted a lot of time on the dogs, delaying his Sage Mode significantly.