Yankees Magazine: The Trust Process

To some, the thought of a 6-foot-6 left-handed baseball player summons images of a towering figure on the mound, not in the batter’s box. Even though the current landscape of baseball has a guy the size of Aaron Judge holding court as one of the top hitters in the league, many still typecast tall ballplayers as pitchers.

But ask Spencer Jones, a 6-foot-6 left-handed baseball player, and he’ll tell you he has always seen himself as a hitter first.

When Jones was drafted by the Yankees with their first-round pick in 2022, it was as an outfield prospect out of Vanderbilt who could add speed and power to any lineup. But before spending three years in Nashville, Tennessee, and a summer in the Cape Cod Baseball League, Jones was once a two-way player who endured multiple setbacks from injuries sustained on the mound -- all despite never wanting to be a pitcher.

He also was a player who admittedly struggled with getting too inside his own head early on in his career, and so the 22-year-old’s journey to becoming the Yankees’ No. 3 prospect (according to MLB Pipeline) included a necessary change in mindset to help him find his way back to loving the game of baseball.

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Growing up and playing youth baseball in Southern California, Jones had always been the biggest kid on the field. By the time he was 12, he stood 6-foot-3 and was throwing the ball hard.

Arm strength was never the main focus for the left-hander, though, as hitting was the skill that Jones put extra time into perfecting. He was known for the power in his swing from a young age; his Little League even discussed putting up a mesh screen in front of pitchers while he was up to bat. It wasn’t until later down the line that pitching would even become a part of the equation.

“I never really figured out the pitching stuff until late in high school,” Jones says. “Once I started to pitch and gain velocity, everybody was like, ‘No, you’re a pitcher now,’ and I hated that. I always thought I was a hitter first.”

It didn’t matter how good of a hitter he was; pitching became a part of his game, and Jones found himself on the mound regularly during his time at La Costa Canyon High School. By the beginning of his senior year, he was a highly touted two-way prospect with a maximum velocity of 94 mph, and as the attention continued to grow, so did the high schooler’s own self-induced pressure.

“I was so focused on, 'What’s my Draft stock?'” Jones says. “It ate me up and didn’t allow me to enjoy it.”

All that noise about the Draft in his head would ultimately mute itself when he fractured his elbow toward the beginning of his senior season -- the first of two major arm injuries he suffered on the mound during his amateur career.

By the time June 2019 rolled around, the Los Angeles Angels used a 31st-round pick on Jones, but with a strong commitment to play at Vanderbilt that he made before he had even played his first high school game, Jones held off on going pro and headed to Nashville to play for head coach Tim Corbin.

Frustrations from his pitching injury would follow him, and despite returning to baseball activities, Jones could barely throw the ball. So Corbin, not wanting to mess with the psyche of the talented freshman by keeping him on the bench, found other ways to get Jones involved, whether at first base or even as a designated hitter.

“This is a kid who’s so athletic, you knew that he could help you on the field,” Corbin says. “But we only got to see glimpses of what I thought was going to be an outstanding player.”

Any chance Jones had of gaining some momentum got cut off 18 games into the 2020 season when COVID-19 ended the year early. Sent back home with never-ending time to dwell on the past, and a feeling that there was a skills gap between himself and his Vanderbilt teammates, Jones wanted nothing more than to somehow find some playing time.

So in the summer of 2020, he got back on the field -- and the mound -- playing in the California Collegiate League for the Santa Barbara Foresters. Just when he was getting his velocity back, another setback would hit -- a torn UCL.

“I just kind of took that as a sign to be like, All right, that’s enough pitching,” Jones says. “Focus on what you really want to do -- be a hitter.”

Returning to campus with a new injury, one that would require Tommy John surgery, coupled with a few COVID close-contact cases in the fall that separated him from his team for about a month, Jones felt even more trapped under the weight of a mental toll that had been growing since the beginning of college.

“I came back to school my second year injured again,” Jones says. “It’s hard to feel like you belong in a place, especially on a team, if you can’t contribute.”

That second season, much like his first, only provided glimpses of the player Jones could be, with no playing time in the field and a limited number of at-bats. His contribution during the 2021 College World Series did prove to be crucial when his two-out single as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth led to him scoring the winning run in a game against Stanford, but there were still improvements that needed to be made before his junior year.

So, Spencer Jones headed for Massachusetts.

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When Brewster Whitecaps manager Jamie Shevchik started looking into Vanderbilt’s Spencer Jones, it took him a beat to realize that he had heard the name before.

“I did some research on Spencer, and I knew he was a highly touted two-way guy at the time,” Shevchik says. “So of course he’s a guy I went after, and when they said, ‘I’m assuming you want Spencer Jones because the grandfather lives in Brewster,’ everything kind of clicked with who he was.”

Jones, despite being a West Coast kid, spent his summers in Brewster with his grandparents, playing in their yard, taking trips to the beach and catching the occasional Cape Cod Baseball League game with his family. His grandfather, Ben Jones, was so confident that his grandson would one day be playing on the Whitecaps’ field that he made it known to Shevchik upon meeting him when Spencer was in high school. Playing in the Cape Cod League wasn’t just something that his grandfather had hoped for, however.

“That’s all I dreamed about in baseball,” Jones says. “I didn’t dream about being in the College World Series or SEC championships or doing all those different things. All I ever wanted was to be good enough to play in the Cape Cod League.”

So when Jones got the chance to play for the Whitecaps, just as his grandfather predicted, he jumped at the opportunity. Mixed with the excitement of a childhood dream coming true and playing for a highly respected summer league, this was Jones’ chance at a fresh start.

Arriving in Brewster in 2021, the 20-year-old was finally cleared for full baseball activity, and Shevchik put him in the Whitecaps’ starting lineup just about every day, primarily in the outfield. The goal wasn’t to see what Jones could do in the field -- it was to get him as many at-bats as possible.

“I think he used that to really fine-tune his skills,” Shevchik says. “From the offensive standpoint, he became a better hitter because there wasn’t a lot of pressure on him. I think he was allowed to relax a little bit and kind of let those skills develop pretty rapidly.”

Over the course of 25 games with Brewster that summer, Shevchik saw Jones grow into a star hitter. From elevating the ball at the plate to gaining confidence during his at-bats, he was improving both physically and mentally. By the end of the season, he recorded 24 hits with a .312 batting average and would help lead the Whitecaps to a league championship.

“That’s where my development really kicked off, was that summer,” Jones says. “I just found myself as a player, in the sense that I was able to go out there and play, have fun, enjoy it. I used to always think that hitting was so mechanical and that my swing had to be perfect to hit pitches. And then I began to realize ... it was more about your mind being engaged in the present and focused on timing.”

With a consistent and successful season of baseball under his belt, Jones headed back to Tennessee and enjoyed a breakout junior year with the Commodores. Thanks to one summer on the Cape, Jones went from an injury-plagued bench player to an everyday contributor who put up a .370 batting average and a .643 slugging percentage. In 61 games his final season in Nashville, Jones recorded 85 hits, 60 RBIs and even swiped 14 bases.

What his head coach was seeing on the field was more than just statistical growth; it was Jones finally finding peace and consistency. And despite all the ups and downs during his time at Vanderbilt, by the time June of 2022 rolled around, Jones was once again a highly touted prospect -- this time as the player he always wanted to be.

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Beyond the impressive summer with Brewster and his final year at Vanderbilt, what made the tall outfielder such a premium prospect was his combination of power and speed. At the MLB Combine, Jones recorded the hardest-hit ball of the day at 112.2 mph while also running the third-fastest 30-yard dash.

Going into the 2022 MLB Draft, Jones’ agent told him he could potentially be picked late in the first round, right near the New York Yankees’ pick. The Jones camp knew that Yankees VP of domestic amateur scouting Damon Oppenheimer had sat next to Corbin’s wife at a few games, and she got the sense that he was impressed. It also didn’t hurt that Jones had played for -- and formed a close relationship with -- Yankees west coast scout Bill Pintard.

So when the 25th pick of the Draft was up, the Yankees, an organization familiar with how impactful a tall, fast and powerful outfielder could be, saw fit to grab Jones off the board. His former college coach considered it a steal, and looking at the way Jones has flown through the first few levels of the team’s minor league system, he is putting weight to that statement.

After playing just three games at the Rookie level, Jones was quickly moved to Single-A Tampa, where he put up a .325 batting average in 22 games last year. So far in the 2023 season, the outfielder has already started to display his talent in the state of New York on the roster of the High-A Hudson Valley Renegades, where he led the team in hits and RBI after the first month and a half of play.

The mental changes Jones made in his game over the last few years have built him back up from a player who fought to get at-bats in his first two years at Vanderbilt to one hitting multiple triples in a game in the Minors (which he did this past April 25). While Jones feels there is still a lot of work to do before he can put on the pinstripes, that fantasy might not even be possible if he didn’t get to the mental place of enjoying being on the field once again.

“I just gave myself a chance and trusted in myself,” Jones says. “That was the biggest thing that made the difference."

Brianna Mac Kay is an editor/publications assistant of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the June 2023 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.