Last year at about this time I wrote a column about the best prospect in the minor leagues, David Wright, who was then 21 years old. At the time, he was tearing up Triple-A, and I pointed out the uncanny similarity between his minor-league statistics and those of perennial All-Star Scott Rolen. Based on this comparison, I predicted that the Mets prospect would be a solid if unspectacular third baseman when called up during the summer of 2004, and that he would show real improvement this year.

Happily for the Mets, I was entirely wrong. Wright was great as soon as he was called up, batting .293 AVG/.332 OBA/.525 SLG in 263 at-bats with the team last season; this year, “improvement” isn’t really an adequate way to describe what he’s done at the plate. Wright’s .307/.399/.529 line actually understates by quite a lot how good he’s been – he’s slugged .490 with three homers at home, as opposed to .576 on the road with six homers. Shea’s spacious outfield is obscuring the fact that he’s already one of the best power hitters in the league.

Equally important, his strikeout to walk ratio of 26 to 38 in 189 at-bats, while tremendous for a player of any age, is far more so for a 22-year-old. It’s no stretch to suggest that Wright will develop in a few years not only into a 40-homer man, but into one of those terrifying hitters who walks more than he strikes out, hitting for tremendous average while drawing 100 free passes annually.

Comparing Wright to Rolen may have been underselling the young Met; he now looks like he could turn into Gary Sheffield or Edgar Martinez at the plate while remaining a fixture at third base. With the possible exception of the similarly freakish Marlins outfielder Miguel Cabrera, there isn’t a young player in the game I’d rather build a team around. Put simply, Wright has every chance to develop into the best player of his generation.

If it seems like I’m laying it on a bit thick, consider the list below of post-integration players who had a career OPS higher than Wright’s .888 at or before the age of 22 in at least 450 plate appearances.

At the top of the list, Bernie Carbo hit .310/.454/.551 in 125 games at 22 for the Reds in 1970; it was one of the great freak seasons, as he hit .219 the next year before settling into a role as a good fourth outfielder with the Cardinals and Red Sox, among other teams. Leave Carbo aside and you’re left with a list on which Vladimir Guerrero – the defending AL MVP and a lifetime .324 hitter – is the worst player. This isn’t bad company to keep.

To put this another way, readers will recall the hype that surrounded Darryl Strawberry when he hit 26 home runs at 21 and then again at 22. Many speculated that Strawberry would break Hank Aaron’s career record for home runs, and he was expected to become the best player of his generation. David Wright is better, by a fair amount, than Strawberry was at a similar age – a far better hitter for average, with a better batting eye, playing a more important defensive position, and playing it reasonably well.

Moreover, Wright has a short, disciplined line-drive stroke; unlike Strawberry and many young power hitters, he doesn’t have a huge, loping swing that leaves him vulnerable to breaking balls and inside pitches. That swing produces the signature Wright hit, which isn’t a long, majestic home run, but rather a line drive that just keeps rising until it clears the fence. It’s not the swing of a player who’s relying on his raw physical skill, it’s the swing of a player who’s just going to get better and better, especially when he learns how to take the ball the other way for power.

Of course there are many potential obstacles to Wright realizing his full potential. While every indication right now is that he is a hardworking and earnest young man not given to letting the temptations of the baseball life affect him on the field, it’s worth remembering that this always seems true of 22-year-olds who can hit .300. While he’s proved especially durable so far in his career, injury can cripple anyone’s career. Most of all, while he’s proved so far that he can hit at an elite level, there’s an enormous difference between hitting this way for 500 plate appearances and hitting this way for 10,000, as Frank Robinson and Eddie Matthews did. Wright isn’t a fluke like Bernie Carbo, but hitting the way he has at his age doesn’t assure him a place in Cooperstown.

That said, Wright is a player Mets fans can believe in. His skills and his performance point the way to an incredibly bright future as the kind of player who can turn a decent team into a perennial contender all by himself. All that’s needed now is time, which he’ll need to learn how to read pitchers and parks, use the whole field, and finish developing physically.

From Strawberry to Dwight Gooden to Timo Perez, from Gregg Jeffries to Generation K to Ty Wigginton, it’s seemed that every young Mets player has proved in the end to be a disappointment, a failure, or a fraud. Perhaps Wright will join them, but I’d bet against it.