won a high school home run derby at the East Village park<\/a>, slipping a ball inside the left-field foul pole in the final seconds of his round. He played at Petco Park as a senior and then was put through the paces during the draft combine ahead of the Yankees making him their first-round pick.<\/p>\nGrowing up, Jones rooted for the likes of Adri\u00e1n Gonzalez, Jake Peavy and the Giles brothers.<\/p>\n
One of his earliest Petco Park memories was wondering why the Friar faithful would boo Kevin Kouzmanoff after a home run.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were just yelling \u2018Kouz!\u2019\u201d Jones recalled with a laugh. \u201cI thought that was funny. But yeah, came to a lot of games here, watched a lot on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vanderbilt recruited the 6-foot-7 left-hander as a two-way prospect, but Tommy John surgery ultimately led him to focus on hitting. The Yankees took him with their first-round pick in the 2022 draft.\u00a0He reached Double-A Somerset the following year, but repeated that level in 2024 and 2025 as he struggled to pair plus raw power with simple contact.<\/p>\n
While a 35-homer season split between Double-A and Triple-A in 2025 was certainly something to dream on, Jones\u2019 strikeout rate jumped from 28.9% in 2023 to 36.8% in 2024 and settled at 35.4% last year.<\/p>\n
But this year, Jones shaved that rate to 30.9% in the minors. He was hitting .258\/.366\/.592 with 11 homers in the Triple-A International League in May when an injury to Jasson Dominguez led to his MLB debut. He was 4-for-24 in that stint, but hit .306\/.419\/.500 over the following 10 games at Triple-A to get another look when Judge went down with a stress fracture in a rib.<\/p>\n
![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SUT-l-spencer-jones-09032026.jpg\")
New York Yankees Spencer Jones celebrates his solo home run against the Los Angeles Angels of a baseball game Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo\/Wally Skalij)<\/p>\n
While Jones has been up and down a bit since then, he is hitting .250\/.322\/.482 over his last 57 games in the majors. Jones mashed two of his nine big-league home runs in the week in Anaheim, all but ensuring he\u2019d be on the roster for a triumphant return to his hometown park.<\/p>\n
Jones said a few dozen friends and family members would be at Petco this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a matter of health and being able to stay on the field every day,\u201d Jones said of finally debuting and sticking with the Yankees. \u201cBeing a pitcher mostly growing up and then getting opportunities as an outfielder in college and being able to carry that through, cleaning up some of the swing stuff I had going on, some of the approach stuff, and then, you know, now having an opportunity to play here is \u2014 it\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spencer Jones made note of this weekend long before he debuted with the New York Yankees in May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":["post-454711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Spencer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SUT-L-padres-0905-005.jpg\")
Spencer Jones #78 of the New York Yankees bats against the San Diego Padres during the first inning at Petco Park on Friday, Sept. 4, 2026 in San Diego, California. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n