Getty

TAMPA, FLORIDA – FEBRUARY 18: Spencer Jones #78 of the New York Yankees poses for a portrait during the New York Yankees Photo Day at George M. Steinbrenner Field on February 18, 2025 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

As things stand today, the New York Yankees may well have the best hitter in the whole of Triple A baseball.

Outfield prospect Spencer Jones has only played 16 games to date with the Yankees’ International League affiliate, the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Railriders, yet he has left his mark and then some. A four-hit performance on Sunday night included his ninth and tenth home runs with the Railriders in only 69 at-bats, to go along with five doubles, six steals, and a .421 batting average.

Spencer Jones home runs are not limping over the fence. Spencer Jones is hitting bombs. And right now, he is hitting a lot of them.

Jones’s Breakout Campaign

Coming into the 2025 season, Jones had not delivered on his power potential. Striking out 200 times in 484 at-bats last season yielded only 17 home runs; instead, he arguably did more of his damage on the base paths, stealing 25 bags with the Yankees’ Double-A affiliate Somerset Patriots in 2024 and 43 across two levels in 2023.

However, continued adjustments to his batting stance designed to drop his hands more and improve his timing have led to the contact rates finally catching up to all the power in his swing. Jones is hitting the ball as hard as ever, but doing so less along the ground, leading to the big flies that have seen him hit for a .691 slugging percentage across both Double and Triple A play so far this season.

If only one stat is needed to tell the story, let it be Jones’s OPS, which on the season so far is an Aaron Judge-like 1.106.

In all the major Yankees prospect rankings heading into this season, Jones invariably ranked second, behind infielder George Lombard Jr. In light of the speed of his emergence, that placing might need reviewing. To that end, the Yankees now have a big decision to make.

Yankees Face Admittedly Pleasant Dilemma

By being a true five-tool player – including being primarily a center fielder, the more coveted position – Jones offers the potential of stardom, which is all the Yankees ever want. With all due respect to Trent Grisham and Jasson Dominguez, useful though they are, they need not be blockers to Jones’s progress if he continues at this current level of growth rate.

However, those tools – and that team control – will also made Jones a highly-prized community on the trade market, somewhere the Yankees also always want to be. With the Yankees’ name attached to every substantial position player and/or relief pitcher thought to be available on the market – a list including, but certainly not limited to, Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, Eugenio Suárez of the Arizona Diamondbacks and hard-throwing Minnesota Twins reliever Jhoan Duran – the Yankees must determine whether the immediate gains of the trade outweigh the long-term of keeping Jones, and of what timeline they want to operate on as a franchise. The answer, usually, is “compete immediately”. But Jones might be one worth waiting for.

If the Yankees are willing to include Jones in any deals this summer, though, then his breakout could not have come at a better time. The market will heat up over the next few days, as the end-of-July trade deadline approaches. No matter how hot it gets, though, Spencer Jones is hotter right now.

Mark Deeks I am continuously intrigued by the esoterica and minutiae of all the aspects of building a basketball team. I want to understand how to build the best basketball teams possible. No, I don’t know why, either. More about Mark Deeks

More Heavy on Yankees

Loading more stories