Young ramping up for minor league baseball
While Major League Baseball owners and players continue to be at odds, with no contract in place, a work stoppage is a real possibility to start the season.
Baseball’s minor leagues, however, are not part of that deal and that’s good news for Jared Young. The 26-year-old Chicago Cubs prospect from Prince George is making plans to return to the Cubs’ triple-A affiliate in Iowa for the start of the 2022 season in April.
Training camp usually starts in mid-February, although the MLB situation has clouded that start date somewhat and Young is unsure when the players will be told to report to the Cubs’ spring training facility in Mesa, Arizona, where he makes his off-season home.
“Minor leagues are separate from the big leagues, so if they don’t have a season, we’re still going to have a season, we just don’t know what time it’s going to start,” said Young. “I’m assuming it will be sometime in mid-February but we don’t have any details yet.”
After not playing at all in 2020, when the minor leagues were shut down by the pandemic, Young started the 2021 season with the double-A Tennessee Smokies, the team he played for in 2019, and was hitting .326 when he got called up to Iowa on Aug. 10. He played 37 games in triple-A and hit .254 with 32 hits, including one triple and five home runs.
Then in December, after considering one other option in Venezuela, Young’s agent arranged a tryout with the Tigres des Licey of the Dominican Winter League. For Young, it was a chance he could not refuse.
“It’s winter ball and a chance to be seen, but it’s not my primary job,” said Young. “I was down there as an off-season thing just to play and get a life experience and I did. I didn’t play as much as I wanted to and I didn’t play as much as I expected to. It was kind of miscommunication or something there but I only played a couple of games and was really looking to play and make a difference, but that’s not how it went down.”
Baseball is a religion in the Caribbean and the fans there are extremely passionate about the game, packing the stadiums with crowds of 15,000 or more. For Young, it was a cultural experience he’ll never forget.
He arrived just before the playoffs and was limited to just five games and 16 plate appearances, going without a hit with two walks before he was released from the roster. Based in the capital, Santo Domingo, the Tigres were well-stocked with major league talent, including 15-year MLB veteran Hanley Ramirez, who was drawing regular duty at first base, Young’s usual position.
“I didn’t know, going down there, that Hanley Ramirez was the first baseman, that would have been something good to know before I went because that definitely affected how much I played,” said Young. “But he’s a good guy to learn from. He’s made $160 million in the big leagues and he’s played for a long time and had insane success. Any time you play with a guy like that and pick his brain a little bit, you’d be stupid not to. I definitely spent time around him and hit with him, and hopefully some of the stuff I saw and talked to him about pays off for me.”