Dennis Jones is fast. You can tell that much just by watching him patrol center field for the MSU baseball team.

But it's hard to gauge just how fast he is unless you look at some of his cheetah-like statistics.

Jones runs the 60-yard dash in 6.3 seconds — about the same pace as the MSU track team's all-time record holder in the 60-meter dash.

He's stolen a team-high 10 bases in 11 attempts this season — only three players in the conference have stolen that many bases with better efficiency.

Baseball scouts rate foot speed on a scale of 20 to 80. Jones is an 80.

"He would be a fast guy in the big leagues," MSU assistant coach Tony Baldwin said.

That makes the junior college transfer far and away one of the quickest players in the Big Ten, and one of the surging Spartans' most dangerous and versatile weapons.

Jones' speed, a genetic gift since childhood, helped him become a three-sport star in high school and earned him a baseball scholarship at Macomb Community College. In 50 spring games last season, he led the team with a .383 batting average and 22 stolen bases in 24 attempts.

Baldwin saw potential beyond those numbers when he scouted one of Macomb's games. Jones, playing right field, chased down an overthrow to prevent a runner from advancing, then cut off another ball in the gap and threw out a runner at third base.

"He changed the game just with his speed," Baldwin said. "We thought, 'Wow, the guy really has some instincts out there. And clearly he can run. Those are two pretty good qualities to have.'"

Jones was offered a spot with the Spartans and decided to transfer. But what he encountered once he got to campus in January was enough to do something few opponents had ever been able to — put him in pause.

The practice routine at Macomb — "basically just get in, get out, get your swings in," Jones said — was nothing like the four-hour-a-day, painstaking-attention-to-detail workouts he encountered in East Lansing.

"It was a tough transition — a lot of work going into it, a lot of things that I needed more work on," Jones said. "But it turned out to be a great experience, and I'm learning a lot every day."

Of course, having the speed of a small sports car helps flatten the learning curve, too.

And it has helped him carve out his own unique role with the team. With his speed, the MSU coaching staff envisioned Jones as a guy who could manufacture his own offense via the bunt — exactly the kind of player to fit the team's small-ball mentality.

Only one problem.

"When we got him, his bunting was atrocious," Baldwin said.

The adjustment process, like most everything else Jones does on the field, was quick. In a midseason intrasquad game, head coach David Grewe told Jones he had to bunt every time he came to the plate. The infielders picked up on the directive and moved in for all of Jones' at-bats.

He still went 3-for-5.

"He's one of those athletes that picks things up pretty quickly," Baldwin said, "and now, all of a sudden, he's getting a bunt hit just about every game."

That's no exaggeration. Jones didn't bunt for a hit at all in the Spartans' first 13 games — he's done it seven times in their last 10, and four times in their last four.

"That's pretty easy offense," Baldwin said. "If he puts it down, there's really no defense against it."

Jones has started all 24 games for MSU (14-10 overall, 5-2 Big Ten), including most of the last month in the leadoff position. He is batting .311, leads the team in RBIs with 22 and is second in runs scored with 15.

But Jones' speed leaves an even more breathtaking impression in the field. An instinctual player, he locks on any ball hit remotely close to him, then doesn't stop running until he catches up with it.

"He gets to them pretty effortlessly," Baldwin said. "I don't know that there's anybody that I've ever coached, or anybody in the league, certainly, that could get to some of those balls."

That's helped ease the transition for MSU's corner outfielders, all of whom also are new to the program this season.

"It really takes a lot of the pressure off of them because we can play them a little bit more toward the lines and then let DJ run things down," Baldwin said. "I don't know how many times he's saved our guys."

Case in point: In a game against Concordia midway through the season, an opposing hitter lofted a fly ball toward the left-center field gap. Recalling it later from the dugout, Grewe pointed to where the ball was heading, then pointed some 100 feet away in right center, where Jones had been standing to start the play.

"We're looking at our left fielder and he ain't going to get it," Grewe said. "And then this kid just comes … "

He darts his hand in front of him and makes a sound like a jet.

"Dive catch."

He smiles and shakes his head.

"He's going to be a special kid to watch."