Yankees' Spencer Jones is showing the way for Mariners rookie Lazaro Montes

That wasn't a misprint. Lazaro Montes really hit a ball 474 feet in the Seattle Mariners' 10-5 loss to the Texas Rangers on Tuesday at T-Mobile Park. That kind of power is worth anything, or so fans have to tell themselves to keep up hopes that Montes can be the Mariners' very own Spencer Jones.

Yeah, yeah. You probably want us to talk more about the homer and less about the whiffs. But whereas the homer is self-explanatory as an example of the extreme power Montes possesses, that he's also fanned nine times in 19 plate appearances is as hard to ignore as it is worth diving into.

That's a 47.4 K% that's only sort of redeemed by the small sample size. He fanned in 31.0 percent of his Triple-A plate appearances, against the average of 23.1 percent for that level of the minors. It follows that he would be even more prone to the strikeout against MLB pitching.

The granular numbers on Montes' chase and contact rates aren't much more flattering:

Here we have a glimpse of what made Montes so polarizing as a prospect. The comparisons between the 21-year-old and Yordan Alvarez are novel, but Alvarez has better discipline and a better knack for contact. In fact, Montes' early showings are as bad as it gets on both fronts.

Perhaps this is as bad as it will get for him, but we all need to reckon with how the Mariners can't take that for granted no matter how Montes finishes this season. Him becoming a de facto starter in right field or DH is the ideal outcome, but he should have a lot to prove between now and then.

What Lazaro Montes can learn from Spencer Jones' rise with the Yankees

All this has me thinking about Spencer Jones, specifically from a place of admiration that I did not have on my bingo card for 2026.

Jones was even more polarizing as a prospect than Montes was, to a point where it became hard-to-impossible to find anyone who still though of Jones as a top-100 prospect when he debuted in May. That was remarkable, given his Yankees advantage and the fact that he slammed 35 home runs in the minors in 2025. Then again, that's how much strikeouts and whiffs scare people.

So when Jones had a .426 OPS and a 44.4 K% in his first run with the Yankees, it was no great surprise. Maybe it wasn't proof-positive that his high-whiff style was doomed in the majors, but it was certainly a strong suggestion in that regard.

Well, Jones has an .804 OPS since he came back from the minors in early June. That's despite a 34.7 K%, as well as the worst contact rate (63.6%) this side of Munetaka Murakami (60.3%). Jones' 34.4 O-Swing% isn't much to look at either.

Optimistically, the lesson for the 6-foot-5, 250-pound Montes is that a pathway to being an effective MLB hitter is within reach if he only makes marginal gains with his chase and contact rates. And that is precisely because he's capable of hitting the ball as hard as the 6-foot-7, 240-pound Jones.

The 116.1 mph jolt Montes put into that ball last night is not much of an outlier for him. At Triple-A, he averaged 94.9 mph with a peak of 116.3 mph. In other words, that 474-foot bomb isn't the hardest-hit ball he's had all year.

It helps to be capable of stuff like this if you're going to hit 40 home runs in a season. This is where congratulations are in order for Montes, who is at 40 homers for the year between 38 in the minors and two so far in the majors.

No matter how many more he adds before the end of the year, hopes for Montes will be high going into 2027. To this end, it doesn't hurt that he has a model to follow.

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