The Young and the Restless
Chicagoland product Alex Young learns how to remain a big league pitcher
(Photo Credit: Arizona Sports)
One summer a few years ago, Eddie Holbrook needed an extra hand with his travel baseball team.
The Northern Knights (IL) coach didn’t have to look far. A former player of Holbrook’s with the Northern Knights, Alex Young, was home from summer ball and looking for a job.
“He had reached his innings limit and was looking for a little extra cash,” Holbrook said. “I was like, ‘come over.’”
Young, a lefty pitcher at Texas Christian University at the time and 2012 graduate of Carmel Catholic High School in Mundelein, IL, helped out with the pitchers. One day, while practicing at Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL, Holbrook approached Young with a request.
He wanted the group of all-star high school upperclassman from the Chicago suburbs to step into the batter’s box and face breaking balls from a Division 1 pitcher.
“I ask Alex, ‘do you want to throw today?’” Holbrook said. “He’s like, ‘OK, yeah, I can throw a little bit.’”
Young took the ball. That’s what pitchers do when their number is called.
On Aug. 15, Young made his first start of the 2020 season for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Although Young did not make it out of the fifth inning, he kept his team in the game, allowing one earned run, striking out five while walking one. Arizona went on to win the game, 7-6.
His next two starts are similar in numerical shape:
Aug. 20: 4 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 4 K, 1 BB
Aug. 25: 5 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 5 K, 1 BB
The big leagues is littered with hard throwing right-handed starting pitchers. Gerrit Cole and Luis Severino of the Yankees. Noah Syndergaard of the Mets. Trevor Bauer of the Reds. From a bye-gone era, Roger Clemens. Dwight Gooden.
Lefty flame-throwing starters are harder to find in modern and past times.
Blake Snell of the Rays throws 95+. Randy Johnson threw in the upper 90’s two and three decades ago. To make an MLB roster as a left-hander, it’s historically done more with craftiness than bullishness.
This artfulness is reflected in Young’s pitch velocity since his call up to the majors in 2019. According to Fangraphs, his average fastball MPH is 89.8, although in 2020, the velo is a shade higher, at 91.3%.
Dating back to his days throwing to anxious high school hitters at Carmel, Young commanded two breaking pitches—a curve and change up. He has since developed a slider, another weapon in his arsenal that he throws more frequently than the other two (23% compared to 21% for change/curve).
“He will normally hit 91-92 (MPH) and throw a bunch of stuff at 85-88 (MPH),” Holbrook said. “It’s good to see him mix it up where he wants to be. He can be tough as he works so well down. When guys can elevate or barrel in the right place they can hit it. For Alex, his location is so pivotal.”
Regardless of the number that pops up on radar guns, whether that two-digit number starts with an eight a nine or a one, the fastball remains the pitch of record for anyone desirous of a long career in the game.
“The one thing I’ve been doing well is establishing my fastball on both sides of the plate,” Young said after his Aug. 15 start. “That’s the one thing I’ve been lacking my last few outings and wanted to work on.”
The ‘last few outings’ Young refers to came in a role relatively new to him as a big leaguer, that of as the situational-bullpen-guy.
In 17 appearances in 2019, 15 were as a starter. But in the offseason, the Diamondbacks signed Madison Bumgarner, he of all those World Series victories in the 2010’s with the San Francisco Giants. The $85m investment in Bumgarner meant the Diamondbacks were going to try to win now. Young’s distinguished performance as a starter in 2019 did not guarantee an encore in 2020.
When baseball began its season in July, Young earned a spot on the Diamondbacks roster. But there would be no starting position. He’d start in the bullpen.
It would be easy to perceive the move as a demotion, as punishment for not pleasing his coaches in a performance-driven industry. Young was a 32nd round draft choice in 2012 out of high school, after all. No one expected him to be Clayton Kershaw.
But because he was originally a late-round draftee, because he posted a 5.17 ERA in a combined Double-A and Triple-AAA 2018 season, because he easily could have been just another lefty who couldn’t throw hard enough to make the majors, because he actually made it, throwing in front of a grandstand full of family and friends on that late June day in 2019 in San Francisco, earning a victory, Young is proven to be a different animal. He doesn’t care about all the reasons he shouldn’t be in the majors.
The fact is, whether a starter or a bullpen guy, he’s a big league pitcher who understands how to remain one.
“If I’m a starter or a reliever, I’m going to do my job. Whatever happens, happens,” Young said. “I like pitching so whatever role is fine with me.”
There is often a fork-in-the-road moment in every athlete’s career. Not due to questionable ability, aptitude is long established. It’s the attitude part, the life experience butting heads with the commitment necessary to continue a career playing games.
Young had that moment in 2014.
A sophomore at TCU, Young was asked by the Horned Frogs coaching staff to be a starter. He struggled.
“I couldn’t find my breaking ball. I couldn’t locate any pitches and I was so frustrated,” Young said. “Things were not going my way.”
An exit meeting with TCU head coach Jim Schlossnagle left Young at a crossroads. He told his coach he wasn’t sure what to do. Did he even want to keep playing baseball?
“I didn’t know if I wanted to come back,” Young said.
After more conversations with coaches and his parents, Erik and Karen, Young decided to try and rescue his languishing baseball career.
In the summer of 2014, Young pitched in the Cape Cod League. One of baseball’s oldest and most famous summer leagues, Cape Cod baseball on the east coast dates back to 1923.
Young landed with the Falmouth (MA) Commodores. Falmouth is a coastal town on the Cape, with 95 miles of shoreline located just north of Martha’s Vineyards.
Young spent time on the beaches. A foodie who loves to cook, he ate lobster rolls and fried clams from the numerous restaurants along the shore. He became close with his host family, who took into their home a down-on-his-luck kid from Illinois, by way of Texas.
In his heavenly surroundings, playing in a ballpark cut out of a Saturday Evening Post cover, Young learned to love the game again. The external results reflected his internal mood.
In six weeks on the Cape, Young made six starts. He won four of them. He made the all-star team. The grip on the breaking ball he had lost feel for, he re-discovered.
“I was holding my curveball wrong and I couldn’t figure it out. I was holding it on the top, but not on the side and not getting that break. I was baby-ing it in there. It was a mental thing,” Young said. “I went to the Cape and I changed my grip. I found my curveball. It was my favorite summer of all time and that experience helped my transition back to TCU.”
The next season, 2015, Young ranked second on the team in wins with nine. He threw almost 100 innings for the Horned Frogs and led the Big 12 with 103 strikeouts. That June, while playing in the College World Series, Young was drafted in the second round by the Diamondbacks.
Four years later, he was in the big leagues.
Life as a major league reliever beats digging ditches for a living. No one would argue against.
But there is an adaptation both physical and mental in form.
“It’s the hardest routine to get into, the day-to-day,” Arizona reliever Archie Bradley said. “How am I going to get ready to pitch in the game that night? Every day you will feel different, you are going to eat something different. Whatever your routine is, when that phone rings and they call your name, you have to be ready.
“It’s something you have to learn on your own.”
Before his three starts in 2020, Young made seven appearances out of the bullpen. On Aug. 12, he threw 21 pitches in relief. Three days later, he threw 63 pitches in the start against San Diego.
A Bumgarner return will likely send Young back to the bullpen. Or another injury could mean Young remains a starter (as of Thursday, Young is slated to start Sunday for Arizona).
Whatever the zigs and zags of a professional season, Young will figure it out and take the ball.
“For some guys, all they want to to is start. Or they’ve figured out the role of a reliever,” Holbrook said. “With Alex, he’s been able to be successful at both. To have that flexibility will allow some good longevity to him.”
“I’m going to go out and compete regardless of how many innings I have,” Young said. “I tell myself every time I go out there, I have to keep proving myself and show that I belong here.”