If you’re tuning up for your draft, or even if you’ve already put in your time at the auction table, you might have noticed one of the NL’s top-prospects doing some decent hitting down south. Ryan Zimmerman is .317/3 HRs/6 RBI this spring in 41 at-bats. His K:BB is 11:4, he’s got 3 doubles, and his SLG% is .610.

Ryan was the 4th overall pick in the 2005 draft after hitting .393/6/59 in his last 61 games at U. of Virginia. He went to A-Savannah, hit .471/2/6 in 4 games, then moved onto AA-Harrisburg, where he went .326/5/15 in 233 ABs. He posted a 34:15 K:BB, slugged .528, and his OPS was .899.

In his Nationals debut Ryan went .397/0/6 in 58 ABs. He slugged .569. People are saying that the power’s not there right now, but it looks like he’d hit 20 HRs in a better stadium. At 6′2, 210, it’s not like he’s got a slap-hitters’ body. And he’s 21.

The one thing Zimmerman doesn’t do, and won’t do, is steal bases. He had 32 in three seasons of college baseball, but was caught 5 times in 6 attempts at AA.

So is he a slugger, or a doubles-hitter? I don’t know who I’d compare him to. Maybe David Wright without the speed and 2/3 of the power. Of course David Wright’s career compares exactly with Chipper Jones’s to this point. And it’s tough to put Zimmerman in that category when his amateur/professional high in HRs for a season is 9. At 21, the Joe Randa comparison is tempting. But Zimmerman is so young that it could take 5 seasons for him to get to 25 HRs and he’d still be a kid.

I’d look at Zimmerman for .300/15/82 this year. Maybe .300/20/90 in 2007. I’ll bet he Ks a decent amount of times this year, and hits a lot of singles and doubles. 20 HRs is asking way too much, and 15 could even be a stretch.