Spencer Jones is on a heater for the ages.
The top Yankees prospect clubbed three home runs in the first five innings for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre in Thursday’s clash against the Rochester Red Wings, turning heads from across the baseball world with the MLB trade deadline nearing.
Jones, the Yankees’ fourth-ranked prospect according to MLB Pipeline, now has 13 homers in 19 games since being promoted to Triple-A, making an increasingly compelling case to be called up to the bigs — or potentially boosting his trade value.
A 6-foot-7, 240-pound lefty outfielder, Jones kicked off his day by blasting a solo shot to the opposite field in the second at-bat of the game to give Scranton/Wilkes Barre a 1-0 edge.
Two innings later, Jones crushed yet another opposite-field solo homer which easily cleared the left-field wall.
With the attention of Yankees fans everywhere already captured, Jones added his third dinger of the day – a towering two-run shot to dead center in the fifth.
Then, as the cherry on top, he made a terrific sliding catch in center field to save a run in the bottom of the innings
Rochester emerged with a 10-8 win, though, with Jones’ finishing the day 3-for-5.
He struck out and popped out in his last two at-bats, respectively.
Jones, whom the Yankees selected 25th overall in the 2022 draft out of Vanderbilt, has tallied 28 homers in the minors this season with Scranton Wilkes-Barre and Double-A Somerset Patriots to go along with a .308 average and 1.079 OPS.
There has been much speculation about whether Jones could be used as a trade chip for the Yankees at the trade deadline to improve their major league roster, but Jones recently reiterated his desire to stay and develop in New York.
“I was just talking to my girlfriend about this,” Jones told The Athletic on Tuesday, “but at the end of the day, I want to play in New York and be a part of this organization and stay loyal to it.”
He added that he has found the trade rumors involving his name, including some about him heading to the Diamondbacks, to be hilarious.
“There was a post of me hitting a home run and one of the comments was, ‘Get ready to speak desert, buddy,’” Jones said. “That’s a really good one. I saw that and was dying laughing. That is just so good. To me, that’s the really fun part about baseball at this time of year. I really like the creativity that fans have. It’s awesome. I don’t know if I can speak desert.”