The New York Yankees haven’t gotten the season they were hoping for from Spencer Jones, who is their top prospect who has yet to debut. The left-handed swinging outfielder has seen his strikeout rate balloon from last season, and the power wasn’t there for most of the season either. After spending the winter trying to work on not striking out and making more contact, Jones found himself whiffing more than ever before, and he was hitting the ball straight into the ground. While the Yankees aren’t at the point where Jones has corrected his biggest issue, we’re finally starting to see the power click.
With a surge in June that has carried into August, Spencer Jones is starting to get the ball rolling at the plate, and the hope is that this can stick and allow him to take a massive leap in 2025.
Spencer Jones Is Starting to Look Like The Yankees’ Top Prospect
The first few months of the 2024 season didn’t treat Spencer Jones well, posting a 75 wRC+ and .295 SLG% over his first 37 games of the season. It was strange because it clicked for the first week, but then he immediately hit a nasty slide that saw him struggle to do much of anything right at the plate. Things got better in June, but the strikeout rate remained remarkably high despite some really good results and excellent power numbers.
Since then, he’s hitting .267 with a 143 wRC+ and 11 home runs, a 52-game sample size where he’s been one of the best hitters in the Eastern League. It’s come with more strikeouts, as his K% is hovering around 37% over that stretch, but he’s starting to get it down a bit in recent games. The key here is that Spencer Jones is hitting the ball in the air more with pull-side power, and that’s resulting in a profile that mirrors what you would expect for someone of his stature.
We won’t look at 2024 as the season where Spencer Jones leaped, but we will look at it as an important building block for him if he’s able to continue to develop as his professional career goes on. His slugging numbers and overall power are much improved from his 2023 season, and that’s thanks to a shift in his batted ball profile compared to what we saw in his debut campaign.
It seems marginal, but all of those metrics improving at once has resulted in him hitting home runs and extra base hits more often. The next step in his development is finding a way to marry his ability to impart damage on contact with an ability to make contact at an acceptable rate, and he wouldn’t be the first prospect to have to learn this skill at the professional level.
Aaron Judge is an unfair comparison to make because he is one of the best hitters we have ever seen. The idea that Jones should be held to that standard is both ridiculous and damaging for him, and the reason the Yankees held onto him this deadline probably has more to do with his declining stock than their view that he’s going to save the franchise. Look at what it’s done to Anthony Volpe, who objectively has been an excellent player this season, but isn’t viewed as such because fans thought he had to become a savior.
Brent Rooker struck out 34.7% of the time as a 24-year-old in Triple-A before making his Major League debut in 2020, and while it wasn’t pretty for him at the plate for the initial stages of his career, he finally clicked and has been one of the top sluggers in baseball this year. That isn’t to say that Spencer Jones is Brent Rooker, but rather to say that sometimes players take time to find their stride at the plate.
Some have compared Spencer Jones to Joey Gallo, and while I can see the similarities in their strikeout rate and raw power, there are some key differences in my opinion. Jones is starting to find the raw power but Gallo always had low groundball rates and could hit the ball with authority on contact. Perhaps what Jones should do is sell out for more power as he has over the last two months and risk the 35-40% strikeout rate if it comes with monstrous production.
There are other skills that Jones brings to the table that make him an enticing prospect, with an excellent glove in centerfield and some blazing speed that allows him to be a base-stealing threat. The Yankees could be looking at a defense-first archetype in a similar fashion to Anthony Volpe, but instead of being a scrappy infielder, it’s a power-hitting outfielder who can hit a ball over 450 feet.
Spencer Jones’ stock should be down after this season; he looked like he could become one of the best prospects in baseball and immediately slipped in Double-A. That being said, the ultimate goal is to become a productive big leaguer, not just an appealing prospect. Players are always trying to develop and hone their craft, and Spencer Jones is in just his second full season as a professional baseball player.
He didn’t hit as much in college as one might think and he has a bunch of skills outside of his bat that should allow him to bring value to a winning ballclub. The question is centered around whether he can make enough contact to be a great player, and while this hot streak is encouraging, the verdict still isn’t very clear.