How GM Chris Young pushed the Rangers back to contention: He keeps the throttle down

Posted by Aldo Pusey on Saturday, March 30, 2024

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — When pitchers and catchers reported to spring training, the comeback player of the year was not among them. When the exhibition schedule began, he was still not there. Chris Young was 35 years old, with thoracic outlet syndrome and a half-dozen teams in his past. He couldn’t find a team until Dayton Moore came calling.

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“He saved my baseball career,” Young said on Wednesday, after his Texas Rangers advanced to the American League Division Series with an emphatic two-game sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays. “Dayton gave me the best baseball experience I’ve ever had by bringing me to Kansas City and winning a World Series.”

That was in 2015, when Young — now the Rangers’ general manager — joined the Royals in March for a minimal guarantee: long relief and a $675,000 salary. It was a comedown for Young, who had just made 29 starts for the Seattle Mariners, but the Royals’ rotation was filled. Even so, they were the reigning AL champions and Young wanted in.

Read more: Rangers vs. Orioles ALDS predictions, pitching matchups and what you need to know

He wound up making 18 starts and winning the opening game of the World Series, a five-game victory over the Mets. Young earned a multiyear contract, too, and personified a lesson that now serves him well: If you think you’ve got a good team, keep adding.

“He keeps the throttle down,” said Moore, now a senior advisor to Young, in a dry corner of the joyous visiting clubhouse at Tropicana Field on Wednesday. “I remember John Schuerholz always talking about how it’s important to try to win every single year. This guy reminds me so much of Schuerholz, it isn’t even funny — both very intense, very smart, highly competitive. I mean, the competitiveness is at a different level.”

Schuerholz, a Hall of Fame general manager, mentored Moore in the front office of the Atlanta Braves. When Moore left to be GM for the low-budget Royals, he carefully built a contender and burst through a tight competitive window, making pivotal trades — Johnny Cueto, Ben Zobrist — to push the Royals all the way.

The same ethos drives Young, who retired in 2017, worked in the commissioner’s office and joined Texas as GM in December 2020. When the pitching staff wobbled this season, threatening the Rangers’ hot start, Young acquired Aroldis Chapman in late June and Max Scherzer, Jordan Montgomery and Chris Stratton a month later.

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The Rangers would finish second in the AL West to the Houston Astros on a tiebreaker, but wiped out the Rays on their way to a series with the Baltimore Orioles starting Saturday at Camden Yards. The credit for the fortified roster, Young said, goes to the players.

“Really, they forced our hand,” he said. “They played their way into first place and they deserved it. I know how hard it is to get to the postseason and I don’t take (it) for granted, and everything that those guys did, the way they started the season, the way they came together and played for each other, they earned that opportunity. I knew we’d hit a tough spot at some point — we did that — but they deserved the opportunity to have those reinforcements around them to give them a chance for this exact moment.”

Rangers players douse Chris Young (back center) with beer in the visiting clubhouse. (Tyler Kepner / The Athletic)

Young made the most of his postseason experience on the mound; before helping the Royals to their 2015 title, he earned the only playoff victory for the San Diego Padres in 2006. His manager then is his manager now: Bruce Bochy.

“He brought me out of retirement and here I am in the postseason,” Bochy said on Wednesday, after the players had hauled Young into the middle of the clubhouse for a beer shower. “I couldn’t be more grateful. It’s pretty cool what they did for him in the clubhouse because he’s really worked hard to give us the tools, the resources to get to where we are now. He was determined to get winning baseball back to Texas, and he’s done that.”

Chris Young shakes hands with Bruce Bochy at Bochy’s introductory news conference last October. (Jim Cowsert / USA Today)

The financial resources, from owners Ray Davis and Bob Simpson, have fueled much of the Rangers’ turnaround. In 2021, when the team lost 102 games, its Opening Day payroll was $94.7 million. This spring, it was $195.8 million.

In that sense, Young arrived at just the right time, when expectations and payroll were low. He initially worked under Jon Daniels, the former president of baseball operations, who presided over five playoff teams in the 2010s but was fired midway through the 2022 season. Daniels had traded Young to San Diego as a young executive, but stayed close with him and saw his potential in the front office.

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“Some of it was on a very basic level: he’s bright, has great integrity, works hard — and his give-a-s— factor is very high,” said Daniels, now a senior advisor for the Rays.

“He loves the game, loves players and he’s very, very competitive, which can be both a blessing and a curse. When you’re so emotionally invested, you have to slow yourself down. But I think it drives him to continue to push. Whether it’s player acquisition or just raising the bar in all areas, I just think he’s wired to go.”

Young, who is 6-foot-10, played baseball and basketball at Princeton but was born and raised in Dallas. Daniels could tell that Young relished the chance to help his hometown team win its first championship.

“Sometimes that can be overdone, the romantic element of hometown-kid-makes-good, but with C.Y., it’s very real,” Daniels said. “There’s a real sense of pride in the area, and a real sense that, hey, this franchise should be held in high regard and hold itself to high standards. He wanted to push everybody to raise their game.”

The Rangers accelerated their rebuild by spending big — but wisely — in free agency over the past two offseasons. Second baseman Marcus Semien and shortstop Corey Seager have delivered on their $500 million combined price tag, and while Jacob deGrom needed Tommy John surgery after six starts this season, three other free-agent starters — Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray and Andrew Heaney — combined to make 82 starts. Buying in bulk paid off.

“He knew the guys he wanted,” Seager said. “He went after the guys he wanted hard, and he got them. It doesn’t all just start with that, though. We kind of came together behind Boch, really grew together, and it turned into a team like this.”

Nathan Eovaldi allowed one run in 6 2/3 innings in Wednesday’s series-clinching win. (Nathan Ray Seebeck / USA Today)

The Rangers have flaws, to be sure; the bullpen can be an adventure. But starters Montgomery and Eovaldi stymied the Rays, and Scherzer may soon return from a shoulder injury. (“I see a path,” he said on Wednesday.) The offense is the best in the AL, with every impact hitter in his prime or approaching it.

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In other words, it’s a roster that would make any architect proud, including the one who saved Young’s playing career and gave him a chance to be a champion.

“He’s just got such a passion to do things the right way — he was like that as a player and that’s what he’s doing here,” Moore said. “There’s a lot of people that want to win in Texas because they’ve never won a World Series. But this guy’s intensity to get it done is unmatched.”

(Top photo of Chris Young, right, and Ray Davis: Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press)

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