June 7, Coors Field, 3-1 count. San Francisco Giants right-hander Logan Webb tried to fool Nolan Jones with a sinker.
Webb missed his spot. Jones didn’t miss his chance.
Pure power and poetry in motion, Jones launched the ball 483 feet into the second deck in right-center at Coors Field, the ball coming off his bat at 114.2 mph.
“It’s almost like you don’t feel anything when you connect like that,” the Rockies’ rookie outfielder said. “You swing and watch it go.”
Jones, 25, has been a bright light in Colorado’s dismal season, but he remains an unpolished gem.
Raised as an infielder, he’s still learning how to patrol Coors’ wide-open outfield spaces. His 34.3% strikeout rate is too high. In his 15 games in July entering the weekend, Jones was hitting .167 (8 for 48) with 22 strikeouts and only four walks. But half of his eight hits went over the fence.
“I want to be the best player in the game, like everybody else out here,” he said. “But there are, obviously, a lot of glaring things I need to fix right now. Like, there’s way too much swing-and-miss right now.”
Strikeouts aside, Jones’ power and potential are clearly off the charts.
Entering the weekend, Jones had hit nine home runs with an average exit velocity of 109.3 mph and an average distance of 438 feet. Both of those measures ranked No. 1 in the majors among players who’d hit at least eight home runs.
The runners-up, with an average distance of 423 feet, were Arizona’s Evan Longoria, Atlanta’s Ronald Acuna Jr., Rockies catcher Elias Diaz and Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani.
Jones had already hit four home runs over 450 feet, tied with Joc Pederson (2015) for the third-most homers of 450 feet or more by a rookie in a single season. Aaron Judge (2017) and Pete Alonso (2019) both hit eight tape-measure homers as rookies.
The 6-foot-5, 205-pound Jones hits left-handed but he throws right-handed. He’s got pizzazz in that department, too. According to Baseball Savant, Jones’ 99.4 mph average on throws is the highest in the majors among all position players.
Rockies hitting coach Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens is working overtime with Jones because he sees a blooming young talent.
“He’s very athletic and very powerful,” Meulens said. “He’s got long legs and long arms and he generates a lot of torque with his lower half when he’s hitting his home runs.
“Sometimes you get that combination of natural strength and also the ability to rotate, with explosiveness, through the strike zone, at the point of contract. That creates that distance when Nolan connects. That’s what allows him to drive the ball with power, to all fields.”
But, Jones admits, it isn’t easy to mesh all of his moving parts.
“I’m a long guy, so timing everything up, and getting all of my levers synched up is sometimes a little more difficult,” he said.
Jones is not just a mash monster at Coors Field. Of his nine home runs, four have come on the road, including a 445-foot blast to right-center last Saturday at Miami’s loanDepot Park.
Jones has launched some clutch homers, too.
On June 11, after a rain delay of an hour and 25 minutes, Jones crushed reliever Brent Honeywell’s 1-1 changeup for a 472-foot homer to right-center field in Colorado’s 5-4 walk-off win over the Padres at Coors. It’s the major’s longest walk-off home run since Statcast tracking began in 2015.
On July 16 vs. the Yankees, his 11th-inning, two-run homer to left-center at Coors tied the game, 7-7. Jones connected on Nick Ramirez’s 89.4 mph sinker. Colorado then claimed its most electrifying victory of the season, winning 8-7 on Alan Trejo’s walk-off homer.
The Rockies acquired Jones from Cleveland in a November trade in exchange for infield prospect Juan Brito. The Guardians, who selected Jones out of Holy Ghost Prep near Philadelphia in the second round of the 2016 draft, were intrigued by Jones’ potential. He made his big-league debut July 8 of last season, but he got squeezed out of playing time at third base when the Guardians signed Jose Ramirez to a multiyear deal. Plus, Cleveland’s outfield was already crowded and there were concerns that Jones was striking out too much.
The Rockies, of course, looked at Jones and saw huge upside, but realized he was a little bit raw. He began this season at Triple-A Albuquerque, hitting .356 with 12 homers in 39 games and forcing his way to a call-up to Colorado in late May.
“We are working on his consistency,” Meulens said. “Consistency for every big-league hitter is important. He needs to put the ball in play more and strike out less.
“… But still, he’s hitting for average (.269) and he has a high OPS (.843) and he’s hitting for power. So we are trying, through a bunch of different avenues, to make him a more consistent hitter.”
That’s not to say that Jones has not been productive. Aside from his team-best OPS number, his .349 on-base percentage is second behind Randal Grichuk’s (.364) and his 5.1 home run percentage is also the best on the team, topping both Ryan McMahon (3.9%) and Diaz (2.9%).
But there are some flaws with Jones’ approach at the plate. Of his nine homers, only two have come on four-seam fastballs, a pitch that he’s had trouble with, as evidenced by his .160 average.
“Most of his home runs have come on pitches lower than 93 mph,” Meulens said. “He’s struggled some with balls up in the zone and he’s mostly connected with sliders and changeups, balls that are down in the zone.”
Manager Bud Black said Jones also can benefit from being ready to fire at more pitches early in the count.
“I think there are some hittable pitches that he’s taking, whether those are premeditated takes, I’m not sure,” Black said. “But a lot of good hitters go up (to bat) ready for that first pitch. And he’s still learning that, a little bit, at our level.”
As Meulens put it: “We like a lot of what we see, but Nolan’s still a work in progress.”
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