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Gold Glove CF Andruw Jones makes his biggest catch with election to Baseball Hall of Fame
Everyone knows Andruw Jones had the speed to make up ground. The talented major league center fielder built a reputation out of catching up with baseballs hit into the gaps in left- and right-center field that got by most outfielders.
When he received only 7.3 percent of the vote his first year on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America Hall of Fame ballot in 2018 (75 percent is needed for election), that didn’t faze him. After all, Jones was the guy Willie Mays called the best defensive center fielder he ever saw play the game.
So Jones did what he did best: He kept gaining ground, year after year in Hall of Fame voting, and in 2026, his ninth year on the ballot, he caught up with and surpassed the percentage of votes needed to get into Cooperstown. Jones will be inducted on July 26 along with Carlos Beltrán and Jeff Kent.
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Jones played with the Atlanta Braves from August 1996 until the end of the 2007 season. He took home his first Gold Glove in 1998 and won nine more in a row from 1999-2007. Add to that the 434 home runs he hit during his 17-year big-league career with five teams (1996–2012) and Jones is one of only four players to win at least 10 Gold Gloves and hit over 400 homers, a stellar list that includes Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., and Mike Schmidt, all enshrined in Cooperstown.
Though Jones put up some impressive offensive numbers, defense is where he sparkled, crashing into walls to rob an opposing batter of a home run, diving to catch some seemingly unreachable balls, and stretching up way over his head to bring long fly balls back to Earth.
One of the players Jones modeled his play after was Ken Griffey Jr.
“I idolized him. I had a poster of him in my room growing up and I wanted to play like him,” Jones said.
The right-handed hitting and throwing outfielder took pride in his fielding and how much trust Braves manager Bobby Cox had in him as a fielder.
“Bobby Cox and the team believed in me. Bobby said go out there and be great. I didn’t want to let anybody down,” Jones said.
During Jones’s tenure with the Braves, the team had an All-Star pitching staff that included John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, all Hall of Famers. The 6-foot-1 center fielder recalled talking to the pitchers before games they pitched to discuss how they were going to pitch to certain hitters, so he knew just how to play those batters.
“I tried to put myself in the position to make good plays,” he recalled.
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
The superb outfielder credits his coaches in the Braves’ farm system and his father, Henry, for his development as an outstanding defensive outfielder.
Jones was born in Willemstad, Curaçao on April 23, 1977. He is the only player from Curaçao ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. His dad, Henry Jones, was known as an excellent amateur baseball player in Curaçao, playing for the Royal Scorpions in the 1960s and ’70s. He especially stood out for his defensive play as both an outfielder and a catcher.
“My dad meant so much to me in both my minor league and major league career,” Jones said. “When I was growing up, my dad worked all day and would come home and go out with me to the field and start preparing me for what we hoped would be a major league career.”
On Jan. 20, 2026, the day Jones would find out he had made it into the Hall of Fame, he was playing in a benefit golf tournament in the Dominican Republic.
“I went back to my room after playing a round of golf. I had some time before the call was supposed to come from the Hall of Fame if I’d made it in this year, and I thought that this might happen. I might get in,” Jones said. “And I thought about my dad, who passed away in 2016, and I thought about how much I wanted him with me on this day and I started to tear up because he meant so much to me and my career.”
The Braves scouted Jones at a very young age and signed him when he was 16 years old. He was such a skilled player that he rose quickly through the Braves’ minor league system and he reached the big leagues on Aug. 15, 1996 when he was just 19 years old.
At the start of the 1996 season, Jones was ranked the top prospect in all of baseball by Baseball America. The gifted teenager was considered a five-tool player with his great defense, strong arm, speed, hitting ability, and power—all aspects of the game his dad emphasized when Andruw was learning the game.
In his second big-league game, the new Hall of Famer hit a homer and a triple, and on Aug. 22, he had his first multi-homer game, hitting two round-trippers against the Cincinnati Reds.
But it was in the 1996 World Series that Jones really made a name for himself as a 19-year-old star. The Braves were taking on the New York Yankees and Jones crushed two home runs to left field in his first two at-bats in Game 1 of the series at Yankee Stadium. The Braves won that first game, 12–1, as Jones became the youngest player to ever hit a home run in a World Series, a record held by Yankees great Mickey Mantle (who hit a homer at age 20 in Game 6 of the 1952 World Series).
“To be honest with you, I didn’t even think I would be there [in the World Series]. I started the season in A-ball and all of the sudden I’m in the World Series,” Jones said. “The Braves had a lot of left-handed power. They wanted to get some right-handed power in there, so the Braves gave me a chance. I guess it goes back to something my dad told me a long time ago: ‘Take advantage of the opportunity.’”
The Yankees went on to beat the Braves in that series 4 games to 2. But Jones burst onto the national baseball scene with his Game 1 performance and took his place in a fierce Braves lineup for the next 12 seasons.
BRAVE(S) NEW WORLD
Career defensive metrics are a rather new statistic, but Jones comes out on top when defensive runs saved is calculated for outfielders, with an estimated 235 runs saved in his career, according to Baseball-Reference.com.
The five-time All-Star (2000, 2002–03, 2005–06) also had imposing power stats, racking up seven seasons with 30 or more home runs, including in 2005 when he hit a NL- and MLB-leading 51 homers. Even Braves great Hank Aaron only hit 47 round-trippers in a season. Jones also had five seasons when he had 100-plus RBI, including 128 in 2005.
Jones’s power stroke contributed to the Braves winning 10 consecutive division titles (1996–2005) while he was with the team. Atlanta had a record-setting 14 straight division titles, starting in 1991 (before Jones joined the team in 1996) and running through 2005.
“You don’t dream about being a Hall of Famer, you dream about being a major league baseball player and being consistent and helping your team win championships,” said Jones, who still lives in the Atlanta area at age 48. “I had a great mentor in Bobby Cox. Every year before we’d come to spring training, he would say, ‘Be ready. We are going to try and win another championship, another division title.’
“Every team says they want to win a championship when they go to spring training, but we had an organization that meant it. We wanted to win another division title. We had so many battles along the way but we managed to continue to win. That’s what you play for.”
In the postseason with the Braves from 1996 to 2005, Jones had 10 home runs and 33 RBI with 65 hits.
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He struggled at the plate during the 2007 season, his last with the Braves. In 2008, he signed as a free agent with the Dodgers, but his tough times at the plate continued. He went on to have stints with the Texas Rangers (2009), White Sox (2010) and Yankees (2011–2012) before deciding to play in Japan with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.
For Jones, it was tough to move on from Atlanta.
“You play for one team for so long. You are so comfortable with that team. It takes time to make that adjustment when you go somewhere else,” he noted. “I know the Dodgers didn’t get the best from me.”
Nagging injuries slowed his career and he didn’t get a chance to play as much as he wanted to over the last five years of his major league tenure.
By the time he got to the Golden Eagles in 2013, those injuries were healing. Jones was able to play every day, helping lead Tohoku Rakuten to a Nippon Professional Baseball League Championship in 2013.
“Winning that championship was a highlight of my career,” Jones said.
He played one more season in Japan and, with his children getting older, decided to call it a career after the 2014 season.
“It is such a great honor to be in the Hall of Fame, even to just be on the ballot,” he said. “There are so many guys you idolized who are in the Hall of Fame, some you played with, some are no longer with us, but to be considered in the same class as they are is quite an honor for me and my family.”
