The Boston Red Sox can only hope the New York Yankees haven’t found their next star slugger.
Spencer Jones has gone on an otherworldly heater since the Yankees promoted him to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The 24-year-old outfielder hit three home runs on Wednesday, giving him a whopping 13 long balls in his last 19 games.
Jones is now batting .400 with a 1.407 OPS since the promotion. His 29 home runs across all levels leads the minor leagues this season.
The Yankees drafted Jones out of Vanderbilt with the No. 25 pick in 2022. Initially seen as a premier prospect, his shine faded when the left-handed masher hit a modest .259/.336/.452 with an alarming 36.2 strikeout percentage in Double-A last season.
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Jones has struck out at a 31.1 percent clip this season, but he’s still batting .306 with Herculean power.
The towering 6-foot-7 slugger has a wide range of outcomes, leading MLB.com to keep him outside its top-100 prospect rankings.FanGraphs’ abbreviated scouting report compared Jones to former Red Sox outfielder Franchy Cordero, a prototypical “Quad-A” player who never established himself in the majors.
Despite that boom-or-bust risk, Jones’s hot streak will probably dissuade the Yankees from moving him before next week’s trade deadline.
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Jones has surfaced as a speculative trade target, particularly as the Yankees pursue Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suarez. Yet the Athletic’s Jim Bowden said in an article published Thursday that Jones is “off limits.”
Jones acknowledged the trade chatter earlier this week, per The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner, by recalling a social media commentator telling him to, “Get ready to speak desert, buddy.”
“I want to play in New York and be a part of this organization and stay loyal to it,” Jones said. “That’s a big part of who I am and where I want to go in my career.”
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At this rate, maybe Jones will be wearing pinstripes when the Red Sox play the Yankees in late August.
Featured image via Brad Penner/Imagn Images
