Upon being called up to the New York Yankee’s Triple-A affiliate back in July, outfield prospect Spencer Jones went on a heater for the ages.

In his first 16 games at the AAA level, Jones hit ten home runs with the Yankees‘ affiliate Scranton Wilkes-Barre Railriders, needing only 69 at-bats, to go along with five doubles, six steals, and a .421 batting average. And then for good measure, in his 19th game, he would tie on three more long balls.

Since then, Jones has inevitably cooled down slightly. Of course he has; no one can sustain that rate of slugging, not even Aaron Judge or Nick Kurtz. Yet despite a slow August, Jones has hit for enough power in the month of September to take the lead across the whole of Minor League Baseball in home runs, this week becoming the first player in the minors to break the 35 home run mark.

Jones’s Power Breakout

Across his time with the Railriders, Jones has hit for a .277 average, slugging at a .562 rate, and adding 18 stolen bases in only 260 at-bats. The tools are all there, and Jones is continuing to showcase the array of talents that made him a Yankees first-round pick back in 2022. Except now, he has unprecedented success to show for it.

The skepticism surrounding Jones’s  projection came from his poor contact rates, and that concern does persist to the hardcore pessimists. Jones’ strikeout numbers are in danger of striking the Moon, punching out 108 times in that time for a 36.7% K-rate, by far the highest mark in his career of a player already highly susceptible to the punch-out.

However, with a .299 ISO mark on the full season that is more than a full 100 points higher than in any previous year of his career, Jones’s power is manifest enough to justify the strikeouts. The looping swing is paying dividends in its own, impressive ways.

Yankees Resisted Any Urge To Trae

Jones – not to be confused with the Denver Nuggets guard and social media pioneer of the same name – is rated as the third overall prospect in the Yankees’ system by MLB.com, behind only George Lombard Jr and Carlos LaGrange, both currently playing at the Double-A level. He is also ranked 86th in the whole of baseball, despite being out of the top 100 as recently as two months ago.

At the most recent trade deadline, the Yankees made a lot of moves, as they are wont to do. And while the moves mostly revolved around the pitching staff, they did acquire Ryan McMahon from the particularly-poor Colorado Rockies to play third base, picked up Tampa Bay Rays utility player Jose Caballero (while Caballero was in the middle of a game against them, no less), and were very much in the running for other position players of note such as Eugenio Suarez.

Their desire to add power bats to a line-up that has been overly reliant on Judge and Giancarlo Stanton has seen the Yankees’ name mentioned in the running for the summertime Pete Alonso bidding wars. And it therefore logically followed that Jones – as a toolsy slugger on the cusp of the majors – could be dangled on the market for a more immediate upgrade to bolster the 2025 World Series hopes.

But if there was any temptation, the Yankees emphatically resisted it. They backed Jones to reach his potential, and themselves to help him get there. And, notwithstanding the strikeout rates, Jones continues to come through.