Entering the season, there was quite a bit of coverage surrounding Spencer Jones and changes made in the offseason to his swing and stance at the plate.
After a difficult 2024 campaign in which he set a new Yankees minor league record for strikeouts, Jones had seemed to fall off his steady march to the major leagues. Needing to make a change heading into what was widely considered a “make or break” season for New York’s No. 6 prospect, the result was the debut of a new closed stance featuring a quick launch move similar to that of fellow Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge.
For many, Jones was a prime bounceback candidate as he returned to Double-A Somerset to begin 2025, partly because of the change in stance. However, after just one series, Jones began to open things up again at the plate.
On April 15, Jones clearly goes from closed to open, and he wound up using the moderately-open stance throughout the series. He opened up his stance even further on April 20 and then did so again two days later on April 22. Throughout the series against Hartford from April 22-27, Jones utilized an open stance setup in a deep, nearly-seated position, but his move to the plate and load stayed the same.
The look of the 6-foot-7 Jones drifting from one side of the lefthanded batters box to the other is awkward at first. The look and adjustments, however, have come with tangible results, including an eighth home run hit on Wednesday and a .926 OPS.
While Jones was productive during the first series of the year, he was chasing and whiffing while hitting a high rate of ground balls and a low rate of fly balls:
| Date | SwStr% | Chase% | FB% | GB% | Swing% |
| 4/4-4/13 | 19%% | 28% | 18% | 45% | 45% |
After opening up more during the next series, Jones found more barrels. It resulted in more fly balls, though, he was still whiffing and chasing some:
| Date | SwStr% | Chase% | FB% | GB% | Swing% |
| 4/15-4/20 | 19%% | 30% | 44% | 38% | 48% |
Then, in last week’s series against Hartford when Jones moved fully to the seated, open setup prior to his move, he nearly eliminated chase swings. By cutting out his bad swings, he was able to lower his whiff totals while also sustaining the same consistent contact point on the barrel and maintaining the increase in fly balls:
| Dates | SwStr% | Chase% | FB% | GB% | Swing% |
| 4/22-4/27 | 15% | 9% | 56% | 11% | 36% |
These performance changes can also be observed on Jones’ heat maps. Below, you can see the differences in contact between the closed-stance sample of April 4-13 and the open-stance sample from April…