Ryan Garcia
It’s hard to overstate how important these next few weeks will be for Spencer Jones, as the Yankees have been slammed with a slew of injuries to their outfield.
Trent Grisham is out for a few weeks with a moderate hamstring strain, Aaron Judge is likely out until after the trade deadline with a stress fracture to his ribs, and Giancarlo Stanton had a setback in his calf strain.
After hammering a 111 MPH laserbeam into the seats off Davis Martin last night, Jones has pushed his OPS+ back over 100 as he’s started to really catch fire after being recalled from Scranton.
He carries one of the most extreme all-or-nothing profiles in the league, but there are some positive indicators here for the 25-year-old that could keep him in the mix for MLB at-bats all year.
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Spencer Jones Is Giving the Yankees a Much-Needed Spark
The Yankees needed a jolt with the pile of brutal injuries they’ve suffered in the last month, and Spencer Jones has provided just that since coming up for an injured Aaron Judge.
He’s hitting .318 with a 193 wRC+ in 26 plate appearances over that stretch and has shifted from right field to centerfield to cover for an injured Trent Grisham.
I’ve been impressed with the swing decisions, as Jones is in the 75th Percentile in SEAGER since he’s uber-aggressive on hittable pitches in-zone.
Since Jones hunts mistakes and generates so much impact on contact that pitchers have to be careful attacking him even with his high swing-and-miss rates.
Will he end up being an above-average MLB hitter? I’m still not sure we can conclude on that in either direction just yet, but the path to him being that has become clearer to me.
The hitter I think of is Oneil Cruz, who has insanely-high Whiff% numbers but has that 80-grade power that allows him to send a ball in any direction out of the yard.
He can provide four easy at-bats for an opposing pitcher in the same series where he spoils some pitches on the edges, gets a pitch to handle, and sends it to the second deck.
Cruz has a better hit tool, but Jones has better launch angles while making better swing decisions in my opinion, which balances out the overall offensive upside/downside in my opinion.
Both hitters really struggle against lefties, which is why for the Yankees they might not want to make him a full-time player without him proving he can match-up against same-handed pitching first.
The downside here is late-stage Joey Gallo who was an uncompetitive at-bat for various teams on one-year deals before he converted to pitching.
I’m not ready to call Spencer Jones a young star, but I am very interested to see what he does with the runway that the Yankees are giving him because of the physical tools.
Sometimes uber-talented players with massive collapse risk end up being flashes in the pan who get hot for a bit and fade into what-if land, but there are some individual cases of these physical outliers becoming superstars.
The Yankees have the chance to get a better understanding of where Spencer Jones will fall on that spectrum, and he’ll have a chance to prove that he should never be in Scranton again.
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