A-Jax on Track for 2010?

Tyler Kepner's out with a tantalizing feature of Austin Jackson, the Yankees' top prospect, who's currently hitting .349 in .AAA and just about on pace to make significant contributions to the team next season. Jackson's hitting coach, Butch Wynegar, a pretty good hitter in his time, is absolutely over the moon about his pupil, even going so far as to compare Jackson's baseball development to Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett's. Mind you, he didn't say a thing about a shared talent level, just Jackson's Puckett-esque potential to develop home run power in the Majors.

“There’s nothing about Austin — defense, arm, base running, nothing — that gives me any doubts that he’s going to be a good player one day,” said the Class AAA hitting coach Butch Wynegar. “I just hope nothing happens at the big-league level where they yank him out of here premature. I’d love to see him stay here all year, see what kind of year he has and go from there. Because he’s not there yet.”

We've been down this road before with the Yankees. It seems like every other year, the organization touts marginal-to-good prospects, like Eric Duncan, Jose Tabata, and Drew Henson, for instance, only to see them fizzle out or play their way out of the system. As Wynegar points out, Jackson is still very much a work-in-progress. His tendency to strike out, to take just one example, is more than a little troublesome, to say the least. I'm not yet quite ready to anoint him the team's next great center fielder, but I am looking forward to seeing what this 22-year-old kid can do in the Majors, hopefully around this time next year.