He’s the #1 prospect in Yankeedom, and not by a small margin. Montero hit an eye-popping .339/.389/.562 between Tampa and Trenton this season. And he turns 20 at the end of November. But just how good is Jesus Montero? I think that we need to answer three questions:

1. Is he a MLB catcher?

2. How good was his hitting season?

3. How much should we consider Montero’s age?

Is he a MLB catcher?

This is the most important question to ask regarding Montero. The man can hit, and with all probability will hit in the major leagues. Even if things go wrong, Montero will hit well enough to be valuable at the catcher position. But can he remain behind the plate? Here is Montero’s defensive statistics from Baseball-Reference:

As always, we can’t tell a whole lot from basic catcher statistics. However, at first glance, we can see that Montero appeared to get worse across the board in 2009. His pass ball rate rose, and he threw out fewer batters. However, the Yankees haven’t even tried Montero at another position. This may be because they are entirely focused on his hitting, but I think their confidence has to be worth something. Montero is not just way ahead of the age curve at the plate, but also behind it. Catchers have a lot more learning to do when they move up to higher levels of competition, and its very possible that Jesus Montero is lagging a bit behind. Still, the signs aren’t yet encouraging.

How good was his 2009 season?

Fucking awesome. While injuries and the limitations of catching held Montero to 92 games, Jesus Montero impressed even his biggest critics. Think about it this way: his stats, extrapolated out to 160 games; 30 home runs, 43 doubles, 200 hits, 121 RBIs, 80  strikeouts and 50 walks. Montero improved his strikeout rate, home run stroke, batting average, and knocked in a ton of runners. And he did it in two tough hitting leagues in tough ballparks while playing guys much older than him. His strikeout rate impresses me more than anything.

Think of it this way: Had Montero stayed in the Florida State League for the whole season, his OPS would have topped the 2nd place leader by 165 points. Had he qualified for the Eastern League batting title, Montero’s OPS would have been good enough for 2nd highest, losing by 34 points to fellow super-hitting-catcher-sensation prospect Carlos Santana. Santana, a sure-fire top-50 prospect and potential all-star, is 3 and a half years older than Jesus Montero. Yeah, Jesus is that good.

How much should we consider age?

I can’t remember the last player at this age to hit this well at this level. But does that matter? Montero has been training intensely with the New York Yankees since he was 16, and has quite a bit of minor league experience under his belt. His performance, if we regarded the same way we regard a 21-22 year old right out of college, is in line with what guys like Pedro Alvarez, Matt Wieters, Jason Heyward, Buster Posey, Gordan Beckham, and Matt LaPorta have produced at the same levels. In other words, Jesus Montero is playing like a well-seasoned, top-10 college hitter.

Jesus Montero has a ton of talent, and has worked with some very good coaches in the past 3-4 years with the Yankees. He probably is more polished than a comparable college player at his age would be. Montero would be eligible for the draft in June had he gone to college. That said, he can probably still expect a great deal of physical maturity in the next couple of years. Montero was not born a Rodriguez-like super-athlete, but like anyone he will respond to strength, conditioning, and growth over time. What does this mean? Look at this graph:

There is no reason to believe that Montero can’t keep up the power-gaining pace that he has been on. If he improved at the same rate that he has been improving at, Montero would hit 45-50 home runs over 162 games in 2010.

Bottom line: There’s a pretty good chance that Montero can hit like Prince Fielder. And while he won’t win any gold gloves, he’s also not nearly as fat as Fielder. We’re looking at a prospect on the same level as the above-mentioned super prospects. Even if he can’t catch.

Take that, BA.

We still don’t have a ton of data, but I think that we can start to make some statements about how the new park is playing. Small sample size and self-selected data caveats should apply here. However, the numbers are pretty interesting.

Hit Tracker gives us the following spray chart:

We can see that a lot of home runs are being hit very close to to the fence in right field. Now, look at the chart by hit tracker comparing the fences of old and new Yankee Stadium.

It looks like quite a few home runs would be questionable hits in that location in the old Yankee Stadium. A relatively small change in the outfield dimensions of the new ballpark seem to have created a fairly big impact. Hit Tracker also gives us the number of home runs hit per game in each ballpark:

1. Citizens Bank Park – 3.43

2. New Yankee Stadium – 3.38

3. Ameriquest Field – 3.29

4. Camden Yards – 2.59

5. Coors Field – 2.55

Yankee Stadium is right up there with four other parks that are traditionally home run havens.

Now, some more concrete data tells another story:

Yankee Pitching Staff Away: 15 HR (18th in MLB) 5.15 ERA (21st in MLB)
Yankee Pitching Staff at Home: 24 HR (28th in MLB) 6.59 ERA (Dead last in the MLB by a full run)

Yankee Hitters At Home: .274/.365/.479, 23 home runs
Yankee Hitters Away: .276/.349/.449  18 home runs

We have two contradictory pieces of data. Yankee hitters play Yankee Stadium basically as a neutral ballpark. They’ve hit a little bit better in Yankee Stadium, but not enough to be statistically significant.

Yankee pitchers on the other hand have been absolutely blasted in the new ballpark. They are a slightly below average pitching staff when away from its confines, but one of the worst in recent memory inside it. There is no reason that Yankee pitchers should be seeing a different ballpark from their hitters.

The only explantions for that data: luck, sample size error, or nerves. I think that the logical explanation at this point is still luck. But, luck runs both ways. While the batting splits seem to suggest that the home runs given up at Yankee Stadium are more a product of pitching than the ballpark, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. I think that this data is statically significant enough even at this point in the season to conclude that Yankee Stadium is going to have some kind of permament hitters park tilt, but right now it looks a lot worse because our starting pitching is allowing too many fly balls.

Moshe and commenter Trevor seem to take some issue with my assessment of Jackson’s power potential as Jeter-like. A lot of people I think have the misconception that Jackson is a 25+ HR threat. Jackson’s opposite-field swing is what prevents this from happening. A closer look at his spray charts from Minor League Splits tells us a little bit about Jackson.

Jackson’s 2008 campaign with the Trenton Thunder:

And his 2007 half-season break out with the Tampa Yankees:

We we can see here is that Jackson throws most of his fly balls to right field, but only hits the ball hard enough to put it out of the park when he pulls it. In fact, the weakness of his opposite-field fly balls hurt him considerably at Double-A last year, as many of them fell for outs. He sprayed more fly balls toward the middle and to left to compensate. These charts might indicate that he should pull the ball more, but I’m not hitting coach.  But, right now at least, Jackson just doesn’t put up enough fly balls to left field to hit 20+ home runs.

Jackson hit .282/.354/.417 with 9 home runs, 5 triples, and 33 doubles with Trenton and .346/.400/.571 with 10 home runs, 6 triples, and 15 doubles for Tampa in half a season.