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Spencer Jones (Photo by Brandon Sloter/Getty Images)
Baseball America is set to update our Top 100 Prospects list to add 2025 draftees on Monday, July 28. While the update will primarily be for that purpose, we will also use it as a chance to tweak the order, in general. At BA, we continually work to gather more of the best information possible, and our Top 100 is a reflection of that.
But before the new list goes live on Monday, we thought we would give our readers a bit of a sneak peek: Yankees outfielder Spencer Jones will rejoin the Top 100 in the update.
The last time we updated our Top 100 at the start of July, Jones had just been promoted to Triple-A after spending parts of three different seasons in Double-A. We left him off the list at the time, in part because we felt Spencer’s long stretch in Double-A (188 games, 830 plate appearances) made for concerns that his strong performance was the case of a more experienced hitter succeeding at a level he’d long since grown accustomed to.
Flash forward to today, and Jones has hit 13 home runs in just 19 Triple-A games. On Thursday, he hit three in a single game. From a performance perspective, Jones’ surge means he’s been one of the best hitters in the minors this year. While hitters can go on hot streaks, Jones’ production is something that is a valuable part of his resume.
Jones’ power potential is spectacular. According to Synergy Sports’ data, 27 of the 58 fly balls he’s hit this year have gone for home runs. While that 46.6% home run rate on fly balls is an unsustainable number—Ryan Howard and Aaron Judge are the only 21st century hitters to post a HR/FB rate above 35% in an MLB season and neither of them topped 39.5%—it does speak loudly to Jones’ ability to drive the ball productively whenever he makes contact.
Jones, who turned 24 in May, had never slugged .500 or hit 20 home runs in a full minor league season before this year, but he’s already at an MiLB-leading 29 homers in 20-25, and he’s assured of slugging .500, as well. He’s slugging an MiLB-best .706 right now. If he went hitless in his next 50 at-bats, he’d still be slugging .511.
It’s hard to think of a Triple-A player with a higher variance in his realm of potential outcomes. If everything clicks for Jones, he could rank among MLB’s home run leaders. But his underlying contact issues also mean he remains at risk of being a prolific MiLB slugger who…