Spencer Jones, the Yankees’ first-round draft pick from 2022, took a big step towards making The Show on Friday when the team announced he was being promoted from Double-A Somerset to Triple-A Scranton, where he homered in his debut. Its been a long and bumpy road for the 24-year-old Jones, but he now finds himself at the highest level of the minor leagues with an opportunity to reclaim his status as one of baseball’s most exciting prospects.
The Yankees selected Jones out of Vanderbilt with the 25th pick in the draft three years ago, and right away it was easy to see why they were willing to take a chance on him.
At 6-foot-7, Jones is a menacing presence in the batter’s box and possesses massive raw power. He’s also considerably faster than anyone would expect a player of his stature to be, and FanGraphs has a 60-grade on his speed. The power-speed combination with Jones is virtually unmatched among minor leaguers, and it gives him one of the highest ceilings of any prospect.
The major problem with Jones—and the reason he’s just now making his Triple-A debut a month after his 24th birthday—has always been the inability to make consistent contact. The hit tool was at an all-time low in 2024, when he struck out 36.8 percent of the time in Double-A and saw his contact rate plummet from 73 to 61 percent. Those are terrifying numbers for any player, and indicated that Jones might never reach the levels that Yankees fans and coaches hoped for him after a blistering post-draft performance in 2022.
This season for Jones has been downright fascinating. He tweaked his batting stance in the offseason, and showed up to spring training looking totally different. The new approach hasn’t had much of an effect on his contact issues, as his Double-A strikeout rate was still at an alarming 33.7 percent and his contact rate actually went down even further to 58 percent, but the contact he has made has been the loudest of his career.
Jones hit 16 home runs in 208 plate appearances, just one shy of the 17 he hit last year in 544 PA. He saw huge jumps in ISO from .193 to .320 and walk rate from 9.9 to 15.4 percent. In total, his wRC+ shot up from 127 to 185.
The most exciting part about Jones’ season at the plate is what he’s been able to do since returning from an IL stint on May 29th. In that time, he’s slashing .325/.411/.639 with seven home runs and a 1.050 OPS. Perhaps most importantly, he’s also cutting back significantly on the strikeouts. In his last 14 games, Jones has just a 24.8-percent K rate on his way to a 264 wRC+ in that timeframe. He appears to have made another tweak in his time on the IL, returning with a slightly more open stance that could be a huge factor in the hot streak.
Jones is currently displaying a number of traits necessary for a player with his profile to find sustained success in the big leagues: an advanced plate approach with the ability to draw walks at a high rate, booming raw power he’s been able to access in games all year, and the adaptability to bounce back after a dreadful season and make the appropriate adjustments at the plate. If these changes prove to be sustainable, especially the drop in strikeout rate, the hype for Jones will reach a whole new level.
The promotion to Scranton begs the question: What are the Yankees planning to do with their red-hot prospect? Now that Jones is just one level away from making his big-league debut, it’s time to wonder when that could potentially be and if he could reasonably be seen as a player who could help the team as they try to get back to the Word Series. The Yankees don’t exactly have a spot open for Jones in the big-league lineup, as Aaron Judge, Trent Grisham, Jasson Domínguez, and Cody Bellinger are locking down the outfield, Paul Goldschmidt has been solid as the team’s everyday first baseman, Giancarlo Stanton has a stranglehold on the DH spot, and Ben Rice has belted 14 homers in a DH/1B role. Elite players can force their way into any lineup, so perhaps the organization views Jones as one of those players, but all signs point to him spending as much time as he needs in Scranton.
It would also fall right in line with Brian Cashman’s history as a GM to use this hot streak from Jones as a reason to dangle him in trade talks at the deadline. The timing of his promotion is quite similar to how the organization handled a similar stretch from Agustín Ramírez last season, bumping him to Triple-A in late June before sending him to Miami as the headline piece in the Jazz Chisholm Jr. trade. It’s a bit more of a gamble with Jones, as his extended history of extreme strikeout rates could make him the perfect candidate to trade for an All-Star bat, but if they do send him away and the improvements at the plate prove to be legitimate, they run the risk of trading a potential superstar. Such are the risks of Trade Deadline season.
This next month will be crucial for Jones to prove that he’s made a leap as a hitter, and that his improved results can hold firm at Triple-A. Again, he’s off to a great start, as he just homered in his very first at-bat at the level. How the Yankees will deploy his services remains to be seen, but for now fans should be rejoicing that Jones has been able to shake off a disastrous 2024 and prove that he’s still the player they’ve been excited about for so long. The best could be yet to come for the left-handed slugger.