Delmon Young’s return to prominence
The 2011 postseason may have ended early for Delmon Young’s Detroit Tigers, but his exploits over the course of his new club’s October run are still worth consideration. Young’s five home runs and .954 OPS in nine games against the Yankees and Rangers forced writers, fans and opponents to take notice.
When looking at how the season began for Young, however, there couldn’t have been too many people who foresaw this kind of meaningful production. For most of the year, Young was plagued by two “I’s” no major league player wants to be associated with: injuries and ineffectiveness.
In late April, a rib injury forced the then-Minnesota Twin onto the disabled list, bringing an end to a woeful month in which he was homerless and had a slugging percentage of .281. In June, Young collided awkwardly with the outfield wall and was put back on the DL with an ankle injury. By that point, Young had hit only two homers and was struggling mightily at the plate.
As the season wore on, Young continued to battle injuries and his Twins fell further and further from a playoff spot. Rumors began to swirl around Minnesota that the 25-year-old outfielder was on the trading block. It would be a curious trigger for Minnesota to pull, giving up on a player with so much potential and just one-year removed from a breakout season. It’s rare to find in the annals of baseball history that a former no. 1 pick who was really in no danger of being called a bust, but who would be traded twice before turning 25.
Being picked before everyone else in a draft puts an enormous amount of pressure on the player, and Delmon Young was no different. Taken by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2003, Young was, as all first overall picks are, destined for greatness. Despite a few bumps during his minor league career (both figuratively and literally), Young had a great first full year in the majors in 2007, hitting a line of .288/.316/.408 and earning the runner-up spot for Rookie of the Year. It seemed that he was on the right path.
[php snippet=1]
But that path changed in the offseason. Clearly no longer part of the long-term plan in Tampa Bay, Young was shipped to Minnesota. It was a bit of a surprising move (Young did strike out more than average, and was seemingly allergic to walking), but it didn’t hamper his ascension. A solid 2008 was followed by an injury-riddled 2009.
In 2010, seven years after being drafted, the California kid finally broke out in the Major Leagues. Missing only nine games all season, Young hit 21 home runs and an .826 OPS, both career high’s. He was decent enough in the postseason too, going 4-for-12 and striking out only once. The stars seemed to finally align for Young.
But, sadly, baseball is not as predictable as astronomy. Just because the stars are supposed to align does not mean they’re going too.
As Minnesota faded out of a playoff position early in the 2011 campaign, the Detroit Tigers started to separate themselves from the rest of the pack in the AL Central. However, they themselves started to experience the two “I’s” as an injury to Brennan Boesch and the ineffectiveness of Magglio Ordonez forced Detroit management to look outside the team for outfield help. They didn’t have to look far.
On August 15, Young was dealt from the Twins to the Tigers for a pair of minor leaguers. The Minnesota faithful weren’t necessarily too keen on the trade. In Detroit, there was a different tone.
Kurt Mensching is the managing editor for Bless You Boys, the Detroit Tigers blog within the SB Nation umbrella. He says the deal was a welcome one for the Tigers.
“The stories were all pretty positive at the time,” says Mensching. “The Tigers really needed an extra outfielder, and the first area of focus with Delmon Young seems to be his status as a former No. 1 overall draft pick and the amount of potential he had.”
Maybe it was the change of scenery, maybe it was the calming voice and tobaccoed breath of Jim Leyland, or maybe it was pure luck, but Young’s season turned around. His first game with Detroit was against his former Twins, and he went 2-for-4 with a home run. The rest of the regular season was vintage Young; eight home runs and 32 RBIs in 168 at-bats.
From the moment he landed in Detroit the pressure was on Young to succeed. After spending most of 2011 near the bottom of the batting order on a non-contending team, Young was supplanted in the three-hole for Detroit, a spot in the lineup he occupied in every game he started with the Tigers. It was a move that surprised many.
“Absolutely no one thought it was a good idea to have a low-OBP guy in front of Miguel Cabrera but manager Jim Leyland, but it seemed to work out fine in the end,” said Mensching. “The thought process was basically, Delmon might see a few more strikes with Cabrera as protection. Maybe he just felt better with the vote of confidence, too. Either way, he did fine and did help the team down the stretch.”
In the postseason Young continued his hot streak. He was massive versus the Yankees in the ALDS, hitting three home runs (including one in the deciding Game 5) in the series. Nobody in the Tigers’ 100+ year history had someone hit three home runs in any postseason series, and this is the team that has employed Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline and Kirk Gibson.
But Young didn’t finish Game 5, leaving in the seventh inning because of an oblique injury. The injury was bad enough that Detroit was forced to take Young off of the ALCS roster.
But that dreaded injury bug struck again, this time claiming the ankle of Magglio Ordonez. Healthy or not, Young was back on the field for the Tigers. He wasn’t great in his first two games, going 0-for-8 against the Texas Rangers. But facing elimination in Game 5, Young broke out, hitting two home runs in a 7-5 Detroit win. It would be his last two hits of the postseason, as Detroit was eliminated in Game 6. Young went 0-for-4 and struck out three times in the loss.
One cannot ignore the first half of the 2011 season for Young, but since 2010, the former No. 1 pick has played good-to-great baseball more often than he’s played bad baseball. His performance at the end of this season and in the playoffs proved he won’t always shy away when faced with enormous pressure. With the longevity of Ordonez in question, it seems logical that Young will try to continue his good work with the Tigers next season.
“In the past, [Tigers management has] seemed to take a rather optimistic viewpoint on some players,” said Mensching. “In Delmon’s case, I think they’re more likely to look at 2010 than worry about the beginning of 2011. He was injured after all, and started to look like the player of 2010 when he was healthier in the second half.”
It was a season that began with so much promise, turned into a disaster and ended up becoming one of the best stories in recent postseason memory. Whether fairly or unfairly, Young will most likely be labelled as injury-prone for the next few years of his career, but as long as he stays away from that other “I” label, that career won’t be ending anytime soon.
[php snippet=1]
