Carson Benge and Spencer Jones have both turned early-season questions into real progress stories, and each young outfielder is showing why New York has reason to pay close attention.
Benge, 23, had already flashed the kind of tools that make him hard to ignore. He’s a premium defender with an elite arm, a plus runner and a stolen-base threat, and he now sits in company with one of the rare first-year players in NL history to post 17 homers and 22 stolen bases.
But the swing still needed work when the season opened. Tom Verducci noted in the first month that Benge looked likely to be inconsistent because his head was moving too much.
That problem has been trimmed down. Benge made an in-season adjustment by closing his stance, setting up with his head closer to the plate and rotating around his core rather than dipping forward toward the ball. The payoff is a longer, more balanced swing that is built to pull the ball with power.
“I think you’re right,” manager Andy Green says. “There was a lot of sway early in the season.
All the excess movement was making it hard to catch up to a good heater and to stay on spin. He’s cut that down pretty considerably.
Still taking an aggressive pass. He has the ability to hit all pitches to all fields, which is a unique attribute to have in a young guy.
He competes every day.
“There’s a lot of fisted, soft hits to the left side that I feel like is a beautiful thing of the past that not a lot of people in the exit velo revolution love so much. But it lights up the scoreboard. It gets a guy on base and helps us score runs.”
Jones, 25, has made a similarly fast adjustment for the Yankees. His swing carries the highest tilt in baseball other than Riley Greene of Detroit, and pitchers initially attacked him with premium velocity at the top of the zone. Early on, Jones was getting beat by fastballs above his hands.
He’s since settled in. Jones has elite bat speed, and that trait has helped him work through the swing’s quirks. The leap he has made against pitches 95 mph and faster is especially striking.
“He’s not a deer in the headlights at all,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone says. “There’s a calm to him.
There’s an underlying confidence. Game to game he’s done a really good job of making little subtle adjustments.
He’s done a good job in the outfield. He’s got make-up speed.
The routes and stuff have been a point of emphasis for him and he’s getting better there. But overall I feel like he’s done a good job.”
Jones has done enough to make a strong case for holding onto the center field job even after Trent Grisham comes off the IL. He hits lefties better, with a .705 slug, reaches base at a better clip and grades out better defensively.
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