Chicago Cubs prospect off to Arizona fall league
Jared Young is living his dream of playing professional baseball as the only pro who has a Prince George address, but he’s not satisfied.
Not even close.
After hitting .300 last season as the Chicago Cubs minor league player of the year, the 24-yearold first baseman/outfielder has had his struggles at the plate in 2019 playing double-A ball in the Southern League with the Tennessee Smokies.
He’s seeing tougher pitching than he came up against last season with the South Bend Cubs (single-A) and Myrtle Beach Pelicans (single-A advanced) but he’s not making any excuses for his drop in production to a .240 batting average as an everyday player for the Smokies.
“It’s not at all where I wanted to be,” said Young. “I thought it would be the same as last year. It’s not exactly what I wanted to happen.”
What he did want was getting picked as one of six Cubs prospects to play in the Arizona Fall League. Young will join the Mesa Solar Sox, a team of select players from the Cubs, Oakland A’s, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Angels, to begin a 30-game schedule on Sept. 18. Only 180 players get to play in the AFL
“I wasn’t really surprised and I’m excited,” he said. “It’s a great honour to go to the fall league and I’m really excited I have more baseball to play. It’s what we do for a living and it’s going to be great.
“The coaches there will be different, from different organizations, and it’ll be a lot of fun. It’s a league that prepares you for the majors and if you perform there, it’s definitely a good look. A lot can change.”
Through 121 games, Young was batting .240 with 107 hits with 21 doubles, a triple and five home runs. He’s walked 33 times, has 58 RBI and a .300 on-base percentage.
Hitting third in the order, Young went 3-for-4 with a walk and drove in one run in a 10-3 win Saturday at Hank Aaron Stadium over the Mobile BayBears. Young’s two-out single in the ninth inning gave the Smokies the lead and they pounded five more runs in that inning.
While his batting average has dropped, Young’s defensive stats have been stellar – a .997 fielding percentage through 82 games at first base and a .994 percentage in 42 games as an outfielder. Now with three pro seasons behind him, Young has a better idea what’s expected of him and how to prepare himself for the daily grind of playing baseball as his full-time job. The season started with spring training in February in Arizona. He’s sat out a few games but with batting practice daily he’s on been on the field virtually every day for the past seven months. That’s helped teach him the mental side of the game.
“You’ve got to be smart and you’ve got to be able to handle adversity,” he said. “It is a long season and the Southern League is hot (and humid) but I think I’m getting more and more used to it.
“It’s a long day but we have a lot of fun, I wouldn’t be doing it if I wasn’t. It’s a privilege.”
The Smokies finished out of the playoffs but it was still memorable season for Young, who has made some lifelong friends on the team.
“It was a blast, we had a really cool team this year,” he said. “There’s a lot you can take from how (his teammates) act and how they play. We didn’t play as well as we wanted to but it was still a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it.”
The double-A league is sometimes a stopping-off point for major leaguers on rehab assignments coming off injuries and Young saw that for himself when Cubs second baseman Ben Zobrist joined the Smokies for one game after a three-month break to deal with his divorce. The 38-year-old Zobrist doubled and walked twice in an 8-2 win over the Jackson Generals Aug. 23, which snapped a six-game losing streak for the Smokies.
“He was only there for one game and you could tell by the way he played and the energy and just how he carried himself, it was really cool,” said Young.
Sharing the field with players of Zobrist’s calibre is another reminder how close Young is getting to the major leagues and the million-dollar salaries that come with it.
Double-A ball players are paid a pauper’s salary and in the Southern League they travel by bus to play opponents in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. They’re on the road for 70 nights in hotel rooms and spend 70 nights in their apartments in Knoxville.
When asked how closely life in the Southern League resembles that of the teams depicted in the fictional 1988 comedy movie, Bull Durham, Young said: “Strangely close.
“There’s definitely a few things in that movie where you’re like, wow, it happened then and it happens now.”
Young was due to board a flight from Knoxville Tuesday and plans to spend four days in Prince George before he heads to Arizona.