Spencer Jones Comes Back From IL with Redefined Swing and Renewed Confidence

Bridgewater, New Jersey – Somerset outfielder Spencer Jones has carried enormous expectations since the Yankees submitted a draft card with his name as their first-round selection back in 2022.

The Vanderbilt product has shouldered the weight of being the one of the organization’s top prospects, while his unique combination of size, speed, power, and athletic prowess makes him a unicorn of sorts in terms of raw baseball talent.

After an up-and-down 2024 campaign, Jones has gone back to the drawing board mechanically, and it appears to have flipped a switch for him offensively.

“I just want to be more consistent,” said Jones back in April. “I don’t want to have months where I absolutely suck.”

Jones came roaring out of the gate with an Eastern League-best nine homers in his first 26 games, with a stellar .926 OPS, before being scratched from the Patriots’ lineup on May 4 and ultimately landing on the IL on May 7. He was activated on Thursday after a 23-day stay on the shelf.

“It was an intercostal [injury],” explained Jones. “It’s a rotator muscle under the oblique, between your ribs essentially. It tightened up on me — gave it a couple of days and got it checked out. Glad it wasn’t an oblique, just a smaller muscle, which let me come back to play a lot faster.”

“I feel amazing,” added Jones. “I am very happy to be back.”

Before being forced out of action for just over three weeks, Jones was producing at an elite level and doing so much differently to the naked eye. He was hitting the ball in the air — and doing so with authority — with a batting stance that was noticeably more crouched and open.

In 2024, Jones hit the ball on the ground 42.3% of the time and in the air just 29.2% of the time. Now in a better position to attack pitches in the zone, the 24-year-old has cut his ground ball rate to 31.5%, while raising his fly ball clip to 40.4%.

“That was a goal in the offseason — to not hit balls 112 [mph] into the ground,” Jones explained. “I’ve been doing a better job of that, and now it’s just going to be about repeating that consistently, because I think when I am in a good spot to hit, I can cover a lot of pitches in the zone and drive them.”

“We found some stuff biomechanically — talking to [Yankees Director of Hitting Jarret DeHart] when he was in town, and talking to [Somerset Hitting Coach Mike Fransoso] here — just some things biomechanically to essentially quicken the trigger. I just found that the more open stance puts me in a better spot to start, and from there I can uncoil a little bit faster and get a little more barrel speed.”

While the work that Jones has done to alter his stance and load is noticeably different, it’s something that he is tinkering with daily. It can appear visually altered on a series-to-series basis, based on a variety of factors including comfort and results.

Spencer Jones (@Yankees No. 2 prospect) hit his first home run since returning from the injured list on 5/28.

Jones ranks second in the Eastern League with 10 homers, only trailing Somerset’s Rafael Flores (11). pic.twitter.com/pnLVYYwNYw

— Somerset Patriots (@SOMPatriots) June 4, 2025

“We were tweaking with it and obviously didn’t play for a little bit,” said Jones. “I’m sure there are going to be some more changes to come with it. I feel really good in the spot that I’m in now — how I’m feeling and how I’m seeing the ball. I always thought that I had a good eye, but just wasn’t positioned to see the ball well the past couple of years.”

Jones logs detailed feedback in a notebook on a game-to-game basis, and at the end of each week, he goes back and compares his personal accounts to video footage before deciding how he is going to proceed mechanically.

“I’m trying to get into a certain position, so I try things for a couple of days and see how it works,” Jones said. “Go back, look at the film and talk about it, and from there kind of work to find what is going to be the best and what is going to be the most natural. The position that I am in right now feels really good, but who’s to say — I don’t know — I might move some things around next week. But right now, it feels amazing.”

Jones added, “I think that it’s fun, I’ll be honest. My swing did not feel right the last two years, and I knew it. It kind of sucked because I knew it wasn’t right. Coming back to this and doing this feels way more natural, and it’s stuff that I’m sure you could see in college — the stuff that I was doing with my back leg, I was in an open stance. It’s stuff that I used to do in the past and got away from in professional baseball. Now, getting back into it is like the light bulb is back on.”

Spencer Shines🎇 pic.twitter.com/LdA2c8yMfp

— Somerset Patriots (@SOMPatriots) April 27, 2025

Through 31 games this season, Jones has cut his strikeout percentage by .3% from his 2024 pace and has walked in 16.7% of his plate appearances — almost one-and-a-half times his career average in full-season play. His batting average is just .237 entering June, but his batting average on balls in play is .311, and he knows as long as he keeps barreling up the ball, the hits are eventually going to be there.

“Early season was about stacking up at-bats every day,” said Jones. “I knew it was one of those things that with more at-bats, more contact was going to come. I’m not too worried about the batting average. I’m excited about the contact stuff and the walking, so I think that’s huge. Since I debuted in Florida a while back, I think this is as good as I have felt.”

SPENCER JONES WITH A BIG FLY! ✈️

The @Yankees No. 2 prospect crushes his 10th home run of the season, the second most in the Eastern League‼️ pic.twitter.com/ztqsCBpDSp

— Somerset Patriots (@SOMPatriots) June 3, 2025

With an approach that is constantly evolving and always under evaluation — despite improved underlying metrics — when does Jones actually find a stance that he’s comfortable with and stick to it?

“I would say every time that I’m in the stance, I’m married to it,” said Jones. “That’s what I want to do, and that’s how I want to feel. It’s just kind of tinkering with certain things and also writing down notes of when I was more open or more spread out — this is what I was feeling, and this is how things went, and that was the week that I was doing it. It’s very fun, and it’s very organic.”

“He has put in a ton of work that obviously started in the offseason,” said hitting coach Mike Fransoso. “He went in with a plan and knew what he wanted to do and executed on it. I think fans may look at the swing change and think it is a completely different swing, but he’s just made a few different changes to the setup. The swing itself is similar, and he is getting into positions that he wants to get to. He just found ways to make it more consistent and to be comfortable, and this is what it ended up looking like. Really, when you break it down, the swing is very similar, and I think he is just really committed to what he is doing right now. It is a committed plan when he goes up there, and you’re seeing good results from it.”

Matt Kardos | SomersetPatriots.com Senior Writer

Matt Kardos has covered the Yankees minor league system for over a decade and will spend his 13th season on the beat covering the Patriots for SomersetPatriots.com. Throughout his career, Matt has contributed to MLB.com, YES Network and Pinstriped Prospects. When he’s not at the ballpark, Matt enjoys traveling with his wife Kimberly, watching Jets football and collecting sports cards.