Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
This will be the largest human profiled in this series. It’s on Vanderbilt’s Spencer Jones, who I had on a big board when he was coming out of a local Southern California high school three years ago.
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Previous Profiles
- Peyton Graham (June 15)
- Drew Gilbert (June 21)
- Ryan Cermak (June 22)
- Thomas Harrington (June 27)
- Peyton Pallette (June 28)
- Landon Sims (June 29)
- Malcolm Moore (July 5)
- Cade Horton (July 6)
- Walter Ford (July 7)
- Eric Brown (July 11)
- Jacob Misiorowski (July 12)
- Henry Bolte (July 13)
- Gavin Turley (July 14)
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Vitals
6’7, 225 pounds
Position: Outfielder/First base
Bats: Left
Throws: Left
DOB: May 14, 2001
Location
Nashville, Tenn.
Year: Junior
Rankings
The Athletic: 90
Baseball America: 49
CBS Sports: NR
ESPN: 20
FanGraphs: 28
MLB Pipeline: 51
Perfect Game: 19
Prospects Live: 29
Slot recommended bonus (No. 29): $1,950,900
Note: All information of draft prospects compiled from Internet sources, scouting reports and videos.
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Vanderbilt has becoming one of the best schools at producing MLB players and prospects. The Dodgers have Walker Buehler and David Price (and Carson Fulmer at Triple-A OKC) and have drafted three other players from Vandy in the Billy Gasparino era — Phil Pfeifer (2015), Jordan Sheffield (2016) and Jeren Kendall (2017). All except Kendall have spent time on an MLB 40-man roster. Jones has a chance to be the next great hitter to come out of Nashville.
Not many hitters with Jones’ size are successful in the majors. The longer arms make it harder to consistently out the barrel on the ball. However, Jones has figured out not only how to do that, but also how to do that with authority. He has easy plus-raw power from the left side and lots of natural loft. He’s also adept at peppering the left-center field gap, ala Freddie Freeman. While he has that raw power, he hasn’t been able to show it consistently in-game, and that raises questions about him getting to pitches on the inner-half of the dish. He also has a tough time against breaking pitches, something that will have to improve if he’s to approach his ceiling. If he can protect the inside part of the plate while spitting on breaking balls, he could take off.
Jones is not only athletic for his size, he athletic, period. He’s not going to be mistaken for Ichiro Suzuki in right field or on the bases, but he’s plenty capable of being a plus-defender with a plus-arm. He was a legitimate 2-way prospect coming out of La Coasta Canyon High School, but he had Tommy John surgery in 2020 and ditched pitching.
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Video
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Because of his size, the easy comp is Aaron Judge. But it’s actually legit. Judge has been able to make his 6-foot-7, 282-pound frame work for him. Jones won’t ever put on that kind of weight, but it’s more the height that matters here. He could be a middle-of-the-order stick if he’s able to turn on pitches at the next level and reduce the whiffs. He probably won’t make it to the 40th selection, but if he does, he has one of the highest ceilings of anyone who could be available at that point.
