Maligned Yankees top prospect Spencer Jones might've figured out Double-A

Spencer Jones opened the 2024 season as an untouchable prospect, an outfielder the Yankees refused to center packages for Corbin Burnes or Dylan Cease around. Burnes was understandable (a rental?), but Cease was tougher to justify, unless the team didn't believe in his pedigree (he has 201 Ks and a 1.085 WHIP in 164 innings this season).

Now? Jones is one of the top fallers on Baseball America's midseason Top 100 Prospects update (down 26 spots to No. 72). He's lucky he's still on the list; MLB Pipeline left him out of their rerank entirely.

Prior to the season, most publications believed that his ridiculous power/speed/defense combo was too tantalizing to justify fretting over his elevated strikeout rate. More than anything, experts hoped that his offseason swing revamp would've led to a year-over-year decrease in that worrisome statistic. Instead, the strikeouts ... rose, as Jones went from a K rate of 29% at High-A last year to 36.9% at Double-A this season. Few MLB players, no matter how toolsy, have succeeded in the bigs at that level of minor-league whiffitude, with Joey Gallo and Javier Báez among them.

But after the write-offs, the plummets, and the scoffing, Jones has found a rhythm under the radar. While he may not have broken out this season -- and while the strikeout rate has still remained worrisome, even as the production has ticked up -- Jones just completed a 30-game span of looking like an elite power threat (and defender) once again, tying for the Eastern League's lead in extra-base hits with 47.

Yankees top prospect Spencer Jones is on fire at Double-A Somerset

Jones took a different-looking step forward this season than fans were hoping for, and he hasn't slugged his way out of the woods just yet.

What he has done, though, is justify a promotion to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to begin 2025, which didn't seem like something he'd earned as recently as July.

The next step on his development path should be a full season at the next level, unless he somehow looks perfectly contact-prone immediately out of the gates. The Yankees can afford to be patient here (and, let's face it, have been too patient, if anything with Jasson Dominguez). Jones' 2024 season has been a year-long reminder that he was always destined to be a project, but at the very least, the last bite has been fairly sweet.