The New York Yankees have some prodigious power in their organization.
Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Cody Bellinger and Ben Rice at the MLB level all can hit home runs with the best of them.
One of the most potent players in the entire organization, though, has never played a game in Major League Baseball. That’s Spencer Jones, who is hoping to make his debut this year.
He’s a 6-foot-7, lefty-swinging, athletic outfielder who is currently on the outside looking in due to a positional logjam.
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He’s also a divisive prospect. He didn’t even make top-100 prospect lists this season despite immense physical tools.
Simply put, no one knows if he’ll make enough contact to swim rather than sink.
“Team officials are fascinated to see how close the 6-foot-7 outfielder is to having an impact at the major league level,” ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez writes. “That should happen at some point this season.”
In this new article by Gonzalez, he picked one player from each team to watch during the spring. In picking Jones, he also went on to lay out a tough reality.
“Jones has struck out a whopping 534 times in 357 minor league games over the past three years, but he moves well, hits the ball incredibly hard and possesses a plus arm,” Gonzalez writes. “One Yankees source described him as having ‘a wide variance to his game,’ which is a polite way of saying he needs to cut down his strikeouts so that his power can truly emerge. This is a crucial year for him.”
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Jones can be a difference maker if he simply hits the ball enough. It sounds simple, but it’s not easy.
Judge had some of the same concerns as a prospect due to his size, long levers and large strike zone, but he never struck out as much as Jones..
As Gonzalez writes, this season ahead will be pivotal for Jones’ career.
