The Decade’s Best: No. 44 Chris Young

Chris Young
Chatham 2000
Pitcher
Princeton

I once saw Chris Young and teammate Dan Krines eating a pre-game pizza at Carmine’s in Chatham. They were in uniform so they were hard to miss.

Young was a little harder to miss. I don’t know if there any records on this kind of thing, but there’s a decent chance that Young — who stands 6’10 — is the tallest player in Cape Cod Baseball League history. To this day, he’s one of the tallest people I’ve seen in day-to-day life, away from a basketball court. Seeing him sitting at a regular table like an average person would at a child’s plastic table is an image I still remember.

Of course, it helps that he made an impression on the field, too.

I don’t think he pitched that night I saw him — pre-start pizza probably isn’t the best idea — but I saw him other times. This was long before I started Right Field Fog, but I knew then that his was a name I wanted to file away and remember.

Not only was he big, he was very good.

Young pitched just the one summer for Chatham but he had as good a single season as just about anybody. In eight starts, he went 4-2 with a 1.86 ERA. Most impressively, he struck out 69 in 53.1 innings for a K/9 of 11.7.

At the time, Young was a two-sport standout at Princeton, but his Cape League performance helped push him in the baseball direction. He had been drafted before the Cape season, in June of 2000. After the season, he signed with the Pirates, who had picked him in the third round.

After the Cape

Young quickly became one of the top prospects in the Pirates system before he was traded to the Expos and then to the Rangers. He made his major-league debut with the Rangers in 2004. He has been a consistent No. 2/No. 3 starter since then, with his best years coming for the Padres in 2006 and 2007.

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