SPOKANE, Wash. – “I started playing at a very young age,” Spokane Indians outfielder Jacob Humphrey said. “Ever since I could pick up a bat with my dad in the backyard.”
Humphrey always knew his life was baseball.
“Probably got hooked on it because my dad played in college up in Maine,” Humphrey said. “So ever since a very young age [it] was a big, big part of our lives.”
Growing up a three-sport athlete in Maine, the road to the show remained a distant dream, but one he never let go.
“You just got to be an athlete, go out there, compete,” Humphrey said. “I think that was biggest thing that, playing multiple sports taught me is just, got to be a competitor.”
Humphrey committed to UMass Lowell, where he broke their single-season stolen base record.
He then transferred to Vanderbilt, winning the SEC title last year.
“I didn’t have many division I offers, so I was like, can I be here?” Humphrey said. “And then to have success you’re like, yeah, you know, I do. I do deserve to be here to play with these guys and then just keep doing that, the higher you get up.”
He didn’t get picked in the 2025 MLB Draft, but then, a day later, he got up that little bit higher.
“Just thinking to myself, like, man, like I gotta actually go find a real job,” Humphrey said. “Like, I gotta go find something to do if this doesn’t work out. But fortunately enough, Rockies calling me the next day and were like, hey, like, we’d like to offer you as a UDFA. And I was like, heck yeah. Like, sign me up.”
“He’s got a little Northeast energy to him, which I really like,” Indians manager Tom Sutaris said. “He brings a lot of excitement to the game. He plays hard. And he’s always ready to make a play. He wants to be really good. And it’s fun coaching him.”
Humphrey spent 2025 in low-A Fresno, and now joins Spokane, filled with six different Rockies top-30 prospects, and he isn’t one of them.
“You always got to have a chip on your shoulder no matter where you go, but just super happy to be here, you know, playing ball every night,” Humphrey said. “Can’t beat it.”
His numbers speak volumes anyway, leading the team in batting average and hits… plus holding one of the lowest strikeout rates in the league and, yes, still stealing plenty of bases and making spectacular outfield snags.
“I think he has a chance to be a really elite defender in the outfield,” Sutaris said. “He can go get it. Has a really strong ARM. He’s conscientious, like he just wants to be good out there. It’s really exciting to see what we have in Jacob.”
“You can’t ride the roller coaster of emotions,” Humprey said. “Otherwise, it’s going to be a long year. You just got to kind of stay neutral and just enjoy it.”
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