Druw Jones’ baseball family has D-backs’ No. 2 pick ready for path ahead
Jul 18, 2022, 6:26 PM
Arizona Diamondbacks outfield prospect Druw Jones knows what’s coming.
The 2022 MLB Draft’s No. 2 overall pick grew up in a baseball family that has him prepared for what the next couple of years are going to look like before he gets to the majors.
And once he gets there, he’s got a pretty good source to speak with about what MLB is all about.
Jones, of course, will always be linked to his father Andruw. Pops was a five-time All-Star, 10-time Gold Glove winner and a Silver Slugger in 2005 across a 17-year career that most notably included 12 years with the Atlanta Braves.
The tail-end of Jones’ career with the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees is what Druw remembers the most, given how young he was during the Atlanta years. The time in the Yankees’ clubhouse around legends like Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez showed Druw what it takes to be great on a daily basis.
“Takes a lot of work to be at that level,” Jones said.
While dad was away in MLB, Druw’s grandpa on his mother’s side was the one who actually taught him to hit. In the last two years specifically, Druw’s dad shared philosophies with him about how to approach certain things on this path.
Jones’ response to a question on how he felt about getting drafted spoke to the poise he already has.
“Just excited to be able to go out there and just continue to play baseball at the high level. Nothing really too special,” he said. “Just being able to continue to get to work.”
Druw’s inevitable comparisons to Andruw don’t seem to faze him. He said with a bit of a laugh that, as players, they aren’t too different.
“Everybody says we’re pretty similar, I mean, we’re probably almost exactly the same,” Jones said. “I can’t really say how many other different types of attributes we have. It’s pretty much all the same. Little bit different contact and power but I probably say it’s about the same.”
In a draft class that didn’t feature a clear-cut top option, Jones was rated by many outlets as the No. 1 prospect, including by The Athletic’s Keith Law.
Jones said he didn’t even know where he was going in the draft until it got underway. He wasn’t paying much attention to mock drafts or anything like that, another indicator of the strong mindset he has as he begins life as a professional.
“You never know. … You have a lot of different people saying a lot of different things,” he said. “I was kind of going with whatever team calls.”
