Spencer Jones' incremental growth is a sign of maturity that should fuel Yankees optimism

There's been a frustrating trend with recent New York Yankees top prospects. While you can never expect a youngster to come up from the minor leagues for the first time and already be a finished product, what you want to see is progress, especially with regard to areas of opportunity. The Yankees haven't gotten that from the likes of Anthony Volpe, Jasson Dominguez, or Austin Wells in recent years.

So, when it comes to a guy like Spencer Jones there was reason to be concerned that he'd follow in the same path. Jones is a physical specimen with elite athletic tools and out-of-this-world strength, all of which have given him a sky-high ceiling. On the flip side, his whiff-heavy tendencies and struggles with contact threaten to make him unplayable at the major league level. It's made him one of the most confounding figures in recent prospect memory.

The 25-year-old has been called up three different times so far this season. His first big league stint did not inspire optimism as his strikeout woes came to life, leading to an extremely concerning performance.

Since then, things have stabilized a bit. Jones isn't setting the world on fire, but overall, his .233/.315/.428 line and seven homers over 178 plate appearances has produced an above-average 108 wRC+.

Part of the reason he has a decent line so far this season is that he's heated up substantially recently. He's hitting .275/.362/.510 with a 142 wRC+ over his last 15 games. That only scratches the surface of the story, however.

Spencer Jones maturity is proving to be the difference between him and previous Yankees busts

The thing that is most impressive about Jones is that he is attacking his weaknesses while understanding who he is as a player. He's never going to be a pure contact hitter. His limbs are too long and he has too many natural holes in his swing.

However, what he is doing is ensuring he aggressively attacks balls in the zone in order to maximize the damage he can do. Jones leads all Yankees with a minimum of 150 plate appearances in the SEAGER metric, which measures the quality of a hitter's swing decisions. Jones frequently attacks pitches in hot zones, which has driven him to the top of this leaderboard.

What's the real-world effect of this, you may ask? In the case of a power hitter like Jones, it's led to an incredible barrel performance that has him leading the league with a 22.2% mark since the All-Star break.

Sometimes young hitters, especially those with strikeout issues, become overly passive at the plate. They overcorrect and try to draw walks to offset the Ks, which usually exacerbates the problem rather than solves it. Kudos to Jones for accepting his flaw, and then taking a real step to rectify it.

Another thing that Jones has surprisingly excelled at is his performance against lefties. As a left-handed hitter, he's vulnerable to southpaws, and typically that vulnerability is set to overdrive for hitters of his archetype. But, in an albeit small sample, the Vanderbilt product has annihilated southpaws to the tune of a 1.123 OPS over 31 plate appearances. Five of his nine hits against lefties have gone for extra bases, proving he's not just dunking balls in.

When you compare that to Dominguez, who never figured out how to improve defensively or hit right-handed and seemed like an overhyped product of the system, or Volpe who just never showed any kind of improvement, or Wells who has regressed from one year to the next, it's clear that something is different with Jones, at least for now.

That difference is a level of maturity that has influenced his approach to his craft. His final form is still to be determined, but his Yankees' future is starting to look a whole lot brighter.

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