Spencer Jones: Is the Next Yankees Star at a Crossroads?
As rumors of the trade deadline shake the New York Yankees, the team’s future, or at least their next week, is unfolding 350 miles northwest of Yankee Stadium. Spencer Jones, the hottest hitter in the minor leagues, is honing his game with the Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, who are visiting the Rochester Red Wings in the downtown stadium.
Meanwhile, the Major League team returns home after losing a three-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays. With the pressure mounting on baseball’s most prominent franchise, Jones and the rest of the baseball world are wondering where he will be on August 1st. In most years in the Bronx, the clamor to call up Jones for his major league debut would have reached a deafening decibel level long before he hit three home runs in five innings in Thursday afternoon’s game. The 6-foot-7 center fielder is batting .400 with 13 home runs and a 1.403 OPS in 19 games since his promotion to the RailRiders on June 27. The combination of Yankee Stadium’s short distance and Jones’ monstrous power from the left side is any fan’s dream.However, Jones’s recent explosion hasn’t inspired the typical calls for promotion. First, because he doesn’t fit into the construction of the Yankees’ roster, which already has too many outfielders worthy of playing every day. Second, his most obvious flaw, the propensity to swing at an alarming rate, has tempered expectations. Instead, his big breakthrough, along with the clear needs of the major league team elsewhere, has made Jones a central topic of trade speculation as July 31 approaches and has created a deadline dilemma for the Yankees. In short, Jones’s brilliant season, at 24 years old, has made him too valuable to be traded?I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’ve never seen a player with so much talent in my life.
Shelley Duncan, manager of the RailRiders
The Yankees’ general manager, Brian Cashman, didn’t mince words earlier this month when outlining his goals for the deadline. He wants to acquire starting pitchers to bolster a rotation that lost Gerrit Cole and Clarke Schmidt for the season. He wants to improve a bullpen that lacks solid depth. And he wants an infielder, preferably someone to replace Oswald Peraza and his 24 wRC+ at third base. “Let’s go to the city,” said Cashman. Until the end of last month, “going to the city” apparently meant making Jones, and all the other players in the Yankees’ farm system who weren’t named George Lombard Jr., available for trades. Rival executives believe that Lombard, a 20-year-old shortstop in Double-A, is essentially untouchable in conversations. Otherwise, it was open season at the right price. The Yankees have several prospects that other teams covet, predominantly pitchers. Right-handed starters Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, Bryce Cunningham, Carlos Lagrange, Ben Hess, and Cam Schlittler are highly regarded. Triple-A catchers Jesús Rodríguez and Rafael Flores, who hit a home run in his third game at that level on Tuesday, are among the others who could be moved to fill gaps. From that group, only Schlittler, 24, has made it to the majors. Schlittler, a former seventh-round pick, has thrown the 10 fastest pitches by a Yankee this season, touching 100 mph while recording an ERA of 4.35 in his first two starts. Cashman must decide if he is part of the team’s immediate future or a trade candidate to improve the Yankees’ chances of winning the 2025 World Series. Cashman also must decide if Jones’ recent play is enough to take him off the table in trade talks or has simply made it the perfect time to trade him.It’s a lot of fun this time of year, just for baseball fans in general, right? I have friends all over the country who want me to play for their team. But my heart is here, with this organization. I’ve been having a great time being a Yankee so far in my career. And you take everything with a grain of salt. It’s part of it, part of the season, and I’m excited to see how things go in the future.
Spencer Jones
If the Yankees keep Jones, they could trade from their surplus of left-handed position players already in the majors, perhaps creating a spot for Jones to fill this season before taking on a daily role in 2026. My gut feeling is that they won’t, they won’t have to change it.I can only imagine there are people who are thinking that. But if you want to look at it as a streak, if you want to say this is a streak he’s on, you might think it’s a good time to change it. I think the person we’re seeing now is who he is.
Shelley Duncan, manager of the RailRiders
There are many reasons to keep him. Jones has a speed you wouldn’t expect from someone his size. He’s a good enough defender that he could stay in center field at the next level. He possesses an innate ability to hit the ball hard in the air to all fields which, along with his size, has drawn comparisons to Aaron Judge. He’s batting .314 with an OPS of 1.116 in 68 games between Double-A and Triple-A this season. His 29 home runs lead the minors. And he would arrive in New York with six full seasons of team control.
But with that top-tier power comes an obvious deficiency that concerns talent evaluators: a disturbing tendency to swing at pitches at an alarming rate since before the Yankees selected him in the first round out of Vanderbilt in 2022. Jones compiled a strikeout rate of 33.7% in Double-A last season. This year, it has slightly decreased to 31.7% between Double-A and Triple-A. For context, that rate would be tied for the fourth-worst among qualified hitters in the Major Leagues with Colorado Rockies third baseman Ryan McMahon, a possible trade target for the Yankees. Jones’s 37.4% strikeout rate in 83 plate appearances in Triple-A would rank him as the second highest in the majors among qualified hitters, between the Rockies’ Michael Toglia, a 6-5 first baseman with a .197 batting average and a .624 OPS, and Judge, the 6-7 American League MVP favorite. His 74.8% contact rate on pitches in the strike zone would rank second lowest between San Francisco Giants slugger Rafael Devers and Toglia. Concerns about strikeouts have made Jones a polarizing prospect in the industry.He has tons of swing and miss. When you have significant contact issues in the minor leagues, that’s scary. To me, he’s not a premium, premium prospect. He’s an interesting player with some potential.
National League executive
It’s a legitimate prospect. But being 24 in Double-A with a 33% strikeout rate isn’t great.
American League Executive
The Jones profile has generated comparisons to 6-5 Joey Gallo, once a top-tier defensive outfielder with great power, high strikeout numbers, and a career .194 batting average who made two All-Star teams in 10 seasons in the Major Leagues. Judge, a lofty comparison based on his obvious size and power characteristics, compiled 373 strikeouts in 1,510 plate appearances in the minors, which equates to a rate of 24.7%, before making his major league debut in 2016. He accumulated 208 strikeouts in his first full season in 2017, has not accumulated more than 175 in a season since then, and has a career strikeout rate of 27.8%.There’s no guarantee when a guy swings and misses as much as he does. But the power is special and the potential is obvious. So I think he’s a legitimate prospect of interest, but that’s not really a deviation from his prospect position.
National League Talent Evaluator
Jones has implemented considerable swing changes since he finished last season with Double-A Somerset. He has worked on eliminating excessive movement to better recognize pitches and allow his athleticism to flow. He has opened his stance since spring training, crouching and using a high kick to activate a more streamlined swing that launches once his foot lands and resembles the core-adjusted rotation to Judge’s mechanics. Scranton batting coach Mike Mergenthaler said he believes Jones has made encouraging improvements in the area, particularly in fighting high pitches in the zone, but acknowledged that a high swing-and-miss rate will likely remain in Jones’ profile. He noted that Jones’ average bat speed, close to 80 mph, is a characteristic that will inevitably produce misses. Statcast considers a swing of 75 mph or more to be fast.Historically, in terms of data, those numbers tend to send up red flags and are not numbers where people see much improvement or big improvements. But when you dig in and start trying to figure out why the failures are where they are and maybe the approach, the swing thoughts that I had, you can put together a puzzle and figure out how to eliminate some of that. I think some of the adjustments we’re seeing happen now are promising.
Shelley Duncan, manager of the RailRiders
Originally from Southern California, Jones has received news from friends and family from all over as the trade deadline approaches. People in his life in Los Angeles, San Diego, Arizona, and Texas want him to play for their favorite teams. Social media buzz has been impossible to ignore, the noise loud enough that Duncan said he planned to address his team about the deadline. For now, Jones still dreams of sharing a garden with Judge and calling Yankee Stadium home. Over the next six days, the Yankees will decide if the subtle advances and strong results are real enough to keep him on that path.The simplicity and the joy that comes with it. I think that simply aligning the mind and body in a way that allows you to be truly, truly yourself is something that has opened my eyes this year.
Spencer Jones
We’ll worry about that when it happens. Right now, there’s still time, so we’ll worry about those things as they happen. But I really can’t talk about anything I can’t control at all.
Spencer Jones
