Top NYY Could-Have-Beens: Eric Duncan
01/21/2025 12:00 PM
The New Jersey kid had all the tools, but just couldn't make it work at the highest levels.
Watching a first-round draft pick and top prospect of your favorite team not pan out is always disappointing, but it's even more so when things were going to plan for a long while.
If you followed the Yankees' prospect pipeline in the 2000s, the name Eric Duncan should be a familiar one. A first rounder in 2003, Duncan was a fixture of the team's top prospect list throughout most of that decade, and was even considered a top 100 prospect at one point.
However, a flame out in the upper levels of the minors kept Duncan from the major leagues and added him to the list of missed opportunities of that era of Yankees' baseball.
Years in Yankees Organization: 2003-09
How They Left: Released after 2009 season
Career MLB Statistics: Never appeared in majors
Career MiLB Statistics: 1,006 games, 4,047 plate appearances, .249/.320/.411, 109 home runs, 515 RBI, 901 hits
Like the Yankees are occasionally known to do, they used their first selection in the 2003 MLB Draft on a local kid when they selected Eric Duncan 27th overall. A product of Seton Hall Prep in West Orange, New Jersey, Duncan was a third baseman committed to play college baseball at LSU when the Yankees flipped him into the professional ranks with a $1,250,000 signing bonus, as he couldn't pass up the chance to play for his boyhood favorite team.
Duncan's high school pedigree was plenty worthy of the selection, as he hit .535 with a 1.090 slugging percentage as a senior, getting named Gatorade New Jersey High School Player of the Year, while also being a first-team high school All-American according to Baseball America. A left-handed batter with some pop seemed like a perfect choice for Yankee Stadium and the Bombers.
Duncan hit the ground running after coming into the Yankees' organization, OPSing .836 across Rookie and Short Season-A ball in 2003. He flew through the system early on, spending 2004 in Low and High-A ball while belting 43 doubles and 16 homers in 129 games between the two levels, good for an .830 OPS.
That helped Duncan earn a spot in Double-A in 2005 at just 20 years old. The wider baseball world began to take notice of him, as Duncan was named Baseball America's No. 36 prospect going into the 2005 season.
In 2005, Duncan ran into his first real hurdle in Double-A Trenton, posting just a .734 OPS, while also missing some time with injuries. That being said, he still hit 19 home runs and was 20, a full four years younger than the average player at that level that season. Beyond that, he went to the Arizona Fall League later that year and showed off his talent. Thanks to a .362/.423/.734 slash line, Duncan was named MVP of the AFL, fully bouncing back from his iffy regular season.
Also during that year's AFL, Duncan got his first professional taste of first base. While he was drafted and had played at third base for all of his minor-league career to that point, as he advanced to the higher levels, the Yankees hoped to potentially move Duncan across the infield. For one, third base was held down by some guy named Alex Rodriguez, and A-Rod's natural shortstop position was occupied by some guy named Derek Jeter. Duncan also faced questions about his defense at third, but with his bat still looking full of potential, first base seemed like a perfectly fine spot for him to land.
Despite the previous year's struggles in Double-A, Duncan still had plenty of prospect pedigree, getting ranked 86th overall by Baseball America going into 2006. A solid run in big league camp at spring training saw him get good reviews from his potential MLB teammates. Meanwhile, the Yankees advanced Duncan to Triple-A to start the 2006 season on the back of his AFL campaign, but a bad start there saw him moved back down a level. While a setback, Duncan was still way younger than the average Double-A player, and repeating the level saw him get back on track somewhat, as he hit 10 homers in 57 games, OPSing .841. However, that did come with a .248 batting average, which wasn't much higher than his 2005 in Trenton, which was not ideal.
By that point, Duncan had begun to fade from the top prospect radar both as far as overall rankings and also in the Yankees' top prospect lists. He returned to the AFL for 2006, but his struggles continued there, and he never got back on track again. Duncan played all of the next three seasons for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, but the returns got progressively worse. His OPS figures from 2007-09 went from .712 to .661 to .527. By 2009, he was even getting some playing time in the outfield, beyond just first and third base, but the shine was truly gone. The Yankees let him go as a minor-league free agent after the 2009 season.
Duncan signed minor-league deals with the Braves, Cardinals, and Royals over the next couple years, but despite some occasionally okay numbers, he never got a major league call up. He suffered a torn quadriceps in spring training 2012, and while he did make it back into action later that year, Duncan decided to retire later that summer.
After leaving the playing ranks, Duncan get into coaching, at first as a volunteer with Seton Hall. He later rejoined the Yankees' organization, spending a couple years as a minor-league hitting coach. The Marlins poached him away in 2019, and Duncan climbed the ranks there, ascending to the job of big-league hitting coach under manager Don Mattingly in 2020 and 2021.
Duncan transitioned to a different coaching role in 2022 and departed the team at season's end. According to his LinkedIn, these days Duncan is now working in the Blue Jays' organization.
When prospects don't work out, there's usually a couple different reasons why, including injuries or just not being able to adapt to the higher levels. In the case of Eric Duncan, it seems like it was a little bit of everything that kept him from the major leagues.
