You know you're getting closer to spring when the prospect lists start coming out. John Sickels' book will be coming out soon as will Baseball America's. The major Yankee prospect names that you can expect to see in most of those books/lists will be Philip Hughes and Eric Duncan as they are probably in the top 50 (give or take) best prospects in baseball. They are the only two to get this sort of attention right now but after this season, with the amount of talent that the Yankees have in the lower levels, I expect to see a few more Yankees on these lists next year (barring major trades/injuries).

Bryan Smith over at The Baseball Analysts has started to unveil his top 75 and Eric Duncan comes in at number 57.

Introduction: Normally, I'm not a sucker for age being a defining characteristic in a player. Too often, I think, players are allowed to use their age as a crutch. Sure, he hit just .240 in Low-A, he's just 18. But for some reason, I do think age is very important when evaluating Eric Duncan. While a .734 OPS in AA is not very impressive, there are things to like in the numbers, and those are enhanced when learning the player was in his age 20 season. I'm also drawn to the Yankees reluctance to trade Duncan, which might reflect a newer organizational philosophy more than a particular faith in Eric. Time will tell, I guess.

Skillset/Future: This winter, the Yankees decided to eliminate Duncan's most glaring weakness: his play at the hot corner. While it had improved in two years through Duncan's hard work, he was never going to be a good third basemen. With A-Rod entrenched at the position, anyway, a move to first base was best for all parties. My anticipation is that Duncan will be a good fielder there, and also could have the bat for it. His power is very significant, and while his 2B:HR ratio was a bit low, he could hit 30 home runs in a Major League season. Duncan also has very good patience for someone his age, which makes up for bad, bad contact issues. When considering all that, his peak is that of a .270/.350/.500 player in my mind. And oddly enough, in 2007, he could be looking to prove that in the Big Apple.

Another Yankee prospect, pitcher Christian Garcia, gets some attention as one of Bryan's picks to breakout during the 2006 season and also in his honorable mention list as prospects who just missed out on the top 75.

Introduction: Like Brignac, this is another one of my breakout prospects. Some of you may be surprised that I rank Garcia third in the Yankee system, ahead of Tyler Clippard, C.J. Henry, Brent Cox and Jose Tabata. However, as I expressed in the BP article, I believe that Garcia has as much potential as any of them, and that he's also very likely to achieve that. Certainly there are maturity obstacles to overcome before a player can breakout, but I see it happening with Garcia.

Skillset/Future: As Rich has expressed on this site in the past, pitchers with high strikeout and groundball rates succeed. Line drives and flyballs simply fall in for hits too much, so I often tend to favor power-sink pitchers. Garcia is just that. His velocity has been throughout the 90s in the minors, but should settle in the 94-96 region before too long. I've also heard fantastic reports about his curveball, which rivals Clippard's for the system's best. These two pitches cause both strikeouts and ground balls, and for success, he just needs to tighten that change. Dayn Perry has proven that low HR rates are the best future predicting stat, and Garcia's 0.3 HR/9 rate is one of the minors' best. With some improvements in control and consistency, I expect Christian to enter the top 50 in the next year.